lansdown partner ltd guidebook for video scripts, activity

©2016 Lansdown Partners Ltd www.LansdownPartners.com

Lansdown Partner Ltd

Guidebook for Video Scripts, Activity Guides and Worksheets

October, 2016

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How to use this Guidebook This guidebook is to be used with the training videos from the High-Performance Hub. The chapters have the same titles as the training videos. Each chapter has the transcript for the video, and the exercises, activity guides and worksheets associated with it. To find the activity guide that you need, look for the video title in the contents section and click on the page number. Please remember that the transcripts and activity guides have been written in everyday language – not in formal or perfect English! The Activity Guides are here for you to use, so please do so. Just reading them probably won’t create the improvements in performance that you seek. And please feel free to make them your own by adjusting them and using your own language as appropriate. When doing the activities with your team/s remember that you can use the videos as part of the set-up for the session. If your immediate focus is leadership development then it is suggested that you follow this sequence: High-Performance Leader (Overview, Impact, Influence, Risks and Fears), Leadership Vs Management, The 80-20 Principle, Responsibility, What’s Driving Your Behaviour, The Core Leadership Skill, The Leadership and Self-Confidence Series, The Neuroscience of Leadership, then the High-Performance Team Series. If your immediate focus is high-performance team development then it is suggested that you follow this sequence: The Building High-Performance Teams Series (1-5), The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, then the other videos as appropriate.


How to use this Guidebook ......................................................................................................... 2 Chapter 1: Building High-Performance Teams – An Overview ...................................... 5

Video Transcript ........................................................................................................................................ 5 Chapter 2: Building High-Performance Teams – Forming............................................... 9

Video Transcript ........................................................................................................................................ 9 Forming - Activity Facilitator Guide: What is Trust? ................................................................12 Forming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Creating The Team Agreements .............................15 Activity Facilitator Guide: Lifeline Dinner ....................................................................................17

Chapter 3: Building High-Performance Teams – Storming ........................................... 19 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................19 Storming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Difficult Conversations .............................................23 A Structure for having Difficult Conversations ...........................................................................26 Storming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Laser Feedback ............................................................28

Chapter 4: Building High-Performance Teams – Norming ............................................ 32 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................32

Chapter 5: Building High-Performance Teams – Performing ...................................... 36 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................36 Activity Facilitator Guide: Raising the Bar ....................................................................................41 Activity Facilitator Guide: Inter-Team Collaboration ...............................................................45 Activity Facilitator Guide: Performance Review ........................................................................49

Chapter 6: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team ...................................................................... 52 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................52 The Five Dysfunctions* and Your Team… .....................................................................................56

Chapter 7: The 80-20 Principle ............................................................................................... 57 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................57 The 80/20 Principle Worksheet (An Individual Perspective) ..............................................61 Activity Facilitator Guide: The 80-20 Principle (Team Session)..........................................63 Worksheet: ................................................................................................................................................65

Chapter 8: High-Performance Leader – An Overview ..................................................... 67 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................67

Chapter 9: High-Performance Leader - Impact .................................................................. 70 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................70 How to have Maximum Impact… ......................................................................................................74 You and Your Goal… ...............................................................................................................................75 Your Focus… ..............................................................................................................................................76 Taking Responsibility… ........................................................................................................................77

Chapter 10: High-Performance Leader - Influence ......................................................... 78 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................78 Trust and Me… .........................................................................................................................................82 What’s Important to me…(My Values) ...........................................................................................83 What’s Your Story? (Transformative Version) ...........................................................................84 What’s Your Story? (Intellectual / Tactical Version) ................................................................85

Chapter 11: High-Performance Leader – Risks and Fears ............................................. 86 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................86

Chapter 12: What’s Driving Your Behaviour – The Iceberg Model ............................. 90 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................90 Activity Facilitator Guide: The Iceberg Model .............................................................................93

Chapter 13: The Core Personal Leadership Skill – The Pause Button ....................... 99 Video Transcript ......................................................................................................................................99 Activity Facilitator Guide: The Pause Button ............................................................................ 103


Chapter 14: The GROW Coaching Model ........................................................................... 107 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 107 Coaching Questions for the GROW Model .................................................................................. 112

Chapter 15: How to Run an Action Learning Session ................................................... 114 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 114 Activity Facilitator Guide: Action Learning ............................................................................... 118 Useful Questions for Action Learning: ......................................................................................... 124

Chapter 16: How to Run a Group Feedback Session ..................................................... 125 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 125 Activity Facilitator Guide: Group Feedback............................................................................... 130 Group Feedback - Preparation........................................................................................................ 135

Chapter 17: How to Run Highly Effective Meetings ....................................................... 136 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 136

Chapter 18: Leadership and Self-Confidence (1 – Low Self-Esteem) ...................... 140 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 140

Chapter 19: Leadership and Self-Confidence (2 – The Sources of Low Self-Esteem) .......................................................................................................................................................... 143

Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 143 Chapter 20: Leadership and Self-Confidence (3 – The Power of Self-Acceptance) .......................................................................................................................................................... 147

Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 147 Chapter 21: Leadership and Self-Confidence (4 – How to Improve Your Self-Esteem) ......................................................................................................................................... 150

Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 150 Leadership and Improving Your Self-Esteem ........................................................................... 155 Other ways to Improve your Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem, and Self-Acceptance… . 156

Chapter 22: The Neuroscience of Leadership ................................................................. 157 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 157 The Big Brain Question Worksheet .............................................................................................. 160

Chapter 23: What is a High-Performance Team? ........................................................... 161 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 161

Chapter 24: Leadership Vs Management .......................................................................... 164 Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 164

Leading, Managing, and You… ............................................................................................... 167 Chapter 25: Responsibility – The Source of High-Performance ............................... 168

Video Transcript ................................................................................................................................... 168 Taking Responsibility… ..................................................................................................................... 173


Chapter 1: Building High-Performance Teams – An Overview

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you’ll learn about what a high-performance team is, why you might want to build one, and how you can start to do it. The other videos in this series will explain the stages that every team goes through in its development, and the specific things that you can do to help improve performance. Let’s start by understanding exactly what a high-performance team is… A high-performance team is…very simply…a small group of people that work so well together that they consistently produce superior results. They’re able to do this because… The team members are all inspired and motivated by a common goal and purpose. They’ve internalized a set of high-performance mindsets and behaviours. And they know each other very well and have a deep level of respect and trust for each other. And the leader of the team helped make all that happen. It didn’t just happen by accident. So, why might you want to build a high-performance team? Well, firstly... achieving results and improving performance is the primary purpose of being a leader. That’s why you’re a leader. That’s what leaders do. Secondly…if you’ve ever been a member of a high-performance team, then you’ll know that it just feels great to be on a team like that. You feel part of something bigger than yourself. You feel proud to be on that team. It feels like anything is possible. Thirdly…if you’re going to be leading and managing your team anyway, then you might as well spend your time building them up and seeking to improve performance. Just going through the motions and maintaining the status quo is boring. And it’s likely to be more stressful for you too. And lastly, when you know how to build a high-performance team. When you have done it at least once. You’ll be able to do it again. And you’ll get even better at doing it. Being able to build a high-performance team is a very valuable skillset.


This next part of the video will introduce to you a very simple model that explains the stages that all teams go through as they learn how to work together and improve their performance. When you really understand this model you’ll be able to quickly see what stage your team is at right now and you’ll know some things that you can do to help the team move to the next stage. And if you’ve been a manager for many years, please don’t assume that you already know this stuff. I’m sure you know a great deal. But please stay open minded and open to learning something new. So let’s now look at that model… It’s popularly known as the Stages of Team Development and it was first proposed by an American psychologist Bruce Tuckman, in 1965. You may well have seen it before. The idea here though is not just that you recognize the model. It’s that you know it so well that you can very quickly see at what stage your team is at AND also know some specific things that you can do to move to the next stage. The model is made up of four main stages that your team will move through on its journey to being a high-performance team. The first stage is called “Forming”. If your team members have just come together to work on something, then you’re in that stage. If you’re new to the team, your arrival will probably send the team back into the forming stage too. The main feature of this stage is that people don’t know each other very well. Neither do they really know what they are meant to be doing. The second stage is called “Storming”. Your team will move into this stage when the team members can no longer continue being artificially nice and polite to each other. Emotions will start to boil over for some. And others will start to go quiet. Your authority as the leader may also be challenged. The third stage is called “Norming”. You’ll only get to this stage if you as the team leader have done the right things to move through stage two. If you haven’t put those things in place, the team will get stuck between stages one and two. The norming stage looks like progress. People know what they’re doing and they know each other much better. There’s more trust, commitment, and motivation. Beyond the norming stage, is the fourth stage. It’s called performing. This is where your team is producing truly extraordinary results. It’ll feel like the team just runs by itself. There’s a laser like focus and very little effort is wasted. Again, it will take conscious work on your part as the team leader to move the team from just norming (which is doing OK), to performing (which is doing very well indeed).


The other videos in this series go into more detail for each stage. Including the best leadership style to use, and some specific activities that you can do at each stage to move the team forward. Let me share with you the most important things for you to remember as you lead your team through all these stages. Firstly, this is all about you attracting, gathering, and focusing the combined energy of all the members of the team. To start with that energy will be all over the place. By the time you get to the performing stage however, that energy will be focused like a laser. Secondly, everything starts with trust. You can’t avoid this truth. Very simply, you won’t build a high-performance team without building trust. And it starts with you showing that you are worthy of your teams trust. I’ll show you how to do this in the forming video. Thirdly, the process of building your team is not complicated. Imagine that all you need to do, is to introduce, and practice, a small set of mindsets and behaviours that I will share with you. Because that is in fact all you do need to do. Fourthly, each of your team members need to feel that they are growing, learning, and developing. If people feel that they are stuck in a rut, you’re going to have problems. It may not be a priority in the forming stage, but certainly should be during the norming and performing stages.

And lastly, please understand that you’ll need to adjust the way you lead, as you proceed through the stages. In the other videos I’ll show you the best ways of doing this. Some final thoughts for you on building your own high-performance team… Your team may show elements of different stages of this model all at the same time. But if you pay close attention, it will become clear to you which stage they’re primarily operating in. Your team will naturally move from stage one into stage two. You as the leader have a critical role to play in ensuring that the team is best prepared for stage two. And when the team is in stage two, you ensure the right conditions are in place, such that the team moves into stage three. Also, there’s not a set time that your team should or will spend at each stage. In these videos I’ll be suggesting some activities that you can do with your team that can accelerate the process. But you have to do them and keep doing them. If you do all the activities that I’ll suggest to you, your team could move from stage one forming, to stage four performing in less than six months. And of course, circumstances will arise from time to time that may push your team back into the previous stage, such as new members joining the team. But now you know what you need to do to move through the stages, so the process should be easier and quicker.


The Tuckman model is just as it says, a model. It’s just a map and guide to help you see where your team might be right now, and what’s possible should you choose to develop it. Please share the model with your team, throughout the whole process. You could share these videos with them. Just the act of doing this will help everyone understand why you’re doing certain activities, and it will normalize the experiences that everyone is going through. Lastly, don’t force the process. Just set the intention that the team will be a high-performance team and produce extraordinary results. Then start doing the activities that are suggested in this programme and keep doing them. They are proven to work. Maybe not perfectly every time. But they will work when you keep doing them. Finally, I acknowledge you for wanting to do this. For wanting to improve your leadership and create the conditions for your team members to learn, to grow, and to build something bigger than just themselves. Many managers would rather just settle for average. So well done you for wanting more than that. From time to time, the going might get tough. When it does, just remember why you’re doing this. Remember why you want to build your team. And the difference that it will make. For you, your team, the organization, and for your customers and those you serve. And please come back to watch these videos again and again. They’ll always be here when you need them. All the best. I’ll see you in the next video.


Chapter 2: Building High-Performance Teams – Forming

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you’ll learn how to start building your own high-performance team. In a previous video we introduced the Stages of Team Development model. You may remember me talking about the forming, storming, norming, and performing stages of that model. This time we’re going to cover the “Forming” stage of that model. What being in that stage looks and feels like. Why it looks and feels like that. And also what you can do as the team leader to best prepare the team for when they move into the second stage of the team development model - the storming stage. If you’ve just taken over a new team, or a completely new team has been created, then it’s likely that you’ll be at the forming stage. In this stage you’ll probably notice the following things:

- The team members are trying hard to be nice and polite with each other.

- There’s lots of busyness, but not much progress.

- Team members may have lots of questions about what to do, how to do it, even

what the team is for. What it’s purpose is.

- You may notice superficial level conversations but not many deeper level

personal discussions. People are being quite guarded with what they share.

- People are also probably trying to look good. To look competent.

Now, why might you see those things? Well… People don’t know each other very well. They don’t really know what they are aiming for, or what they need to do. They don’t know how they fit into the group. They really don’t want to be rejected by the group. They’re trying to get a sense of you as the leader. What’s acceptable to you and what’s not. What’s important to you and what’s not.


So, what does success look like in stage one. What needs to have been achieved with the team for them to move into stage two in the best possible way. Firstly, the team members need you to give them a sense of direction and purpose, and a sense of who’s doing what. It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just needs to be your first best idea of it. This will give your team some clarity and reduce uncertainty. Like I said, don’t worry if it’s not perfect. You will get clarity on this as time goes on and the team develops. Secondly, the team members need to build trust with each other, by getting to know each other better. They’ll need as much trust with each other as possible as they to move into stage two. And thirdly, the team members need to know that there are some guidelines, some rules, or agreements, that let everyone know how to be with each other. What’s acceptable, and what’s not. How you’ll solve problems and how you’ll handle disagreements. If these things are not in place and understood as you move into stage two, things will get difficult. For you as the team leader, this means that you’ll be most effective moving through stage one and into stage two, by being quite directive. Not overly authoritarian. But just firm enough so that your team members know that you know where you are going. That you have confidence in yourself. They are looking at you for some direction in this stage. They don’t want you to ask them what direction they should go in. At least not at this stage anyway. You’ll also benefit from sharing quite a lot of personal information about yourself. Not with every detail of your life. But certainly sharing some personal stories about experiences you’ve had that have made you the person that you are. Being open in this way can build trust very very quickly. Don’t just hope that people will get to know you and get to know each other all by themselves. By leaving it to chance, it will take a very long time. You need to nudge this process along. By being open yourself. And by doing the activities with your team that you’ll find next to this video. You’d be amazed. I’ve met managers who’ve sat next to each other, in the same office, for years. And they’ve not known even the most basic level of personal information about each other. They may work OK with each other, but the level of trust will not be high, and they’re certainly never going to be a high-performance team. OK, so now the most important thing… If your team is in stage one right now, they’ll move into stage two, whether you want them to or not. Your only question is “How to best prepare them for stage two?” So three things for you to remember in stage one:


Firstly, increase clarity. Reduce uncertainty. About things like direction, purpose, objectives, roles, responsibilities, and team agreements. Secondly, start the process of personal development for each individual. So they start to become more aware of their own mindsets and behaviours. You’ll find activities that you can do for this next to this video. And thirdly, help the team members to get to know each other better. Again, there are activities that you can do to help you with this. That’s all you need to know to get started. Please now look next to this video where you’ll find a set of short facilitator guides for those activities that I’ve been referring to. Don’t delay. Start doing some of those things with your team right now. They’re already on their way to stage two, the storming phase. Best you help get them ready for it. So good luck and I’ll see you in the next stage. That’s where it starts to get really interesting. The Activity Guides for the Norming Stage are:

1. What is Trust? 2. Creating a set of Team Agreements 3. The Lifeline Dinner

It is also strongly suggested that you watch the video titled “What’s Driving Your Behaviour – The Iceberg Model” and do the accompanying activities with your team first.


Forming - Activity Facilitator Guide: What is Trust? Objective:

x To create a solid platform for the team to talk about and develop trust.

x This is important because the word trust means different things to different people.

x If your team has not defined exactly what they mean by the word trust, every

time you talk about “Trust” you will be pretty much wasting your time, because each of you will be talking about different things.

x When team members understand the different elements of Trust, they will know

exactly what they can do to build trust.

Facilitator Instructions: This is a simple session to run, with few instructions. All you need is a semi-circle of chairs (with no tables in front of them), one chair out front for you, and a flip chart. You will need to pre-prepare one flip-chart (with the Trust Equation – see later), but keep this chart covered until you get to the right point in the session.

1. Introduce the session and explain the objectives (as above).

2. Share a short (2 minutes) personal story about an experience you had in the past where there was a high level of trust (and what that made possible for you).

3. Share another short (2 minutes) personal story about an experience you had in the past where there was a low level of trust (and what the impact of that was for you).

4. Ask the following question and discuss the answers: “Why is Trust so important to us if we want to become a High-Performance Team?

5. Then ask the following question to the team:

“Think about someone who you trust deeply…Now think about what it is that makes you trust them deeply? What is it about them or the situation, or what they do, that makes you trust them?” Pause for 10 seconds. And then say:

“Now turn to the person next to you and have a brief conversation about why you trust that person so much. Try and be as specific as you can.” (Leave people in this paired conversation for 5 minutes max).

6. Then ask the group:

“OK, so why is it that you trust those people so much?”


7. As people answer that question, write a few words, from their answers on a flip-chart. (Words will probably be something like: Reliability, Accountability, Acceptance, Openness, Authentic, Known them a long time, They keep things confidential. They have my interests at heart, etc).

8. Make the important point:

“So as you can see, Trust means different things to each of us”. 9. Reveal the Trust Equation (That you pre-prepared before the session started)

and explain it something like this:

“Here is a simple way of understanding trust that includes most of what we have already identified. Let’s work through each element so we all have a common understanding of what these things mean.”

Trust = Reliability + Acceptance + Openness + Authenticity -----------------------------------------------------------------

Degree of Self-Focus

10. Work through each element of the Trust Equation, asking:

“So what does this element, this word actually mean? What does it look like? How will we know it exists?”

And facilitate an open discussion about it. (At least 5 – 10 minutes per element). In simple terms, for ourselves and others, the highest level of trust will be built when we maximize the four elements on top of the equation and minimize the degree to which we are focused on ourselves.

Here’s some useful definitions for each element: Reliability – The person does what they said they would do. Including turning up on time to meetings. Acceptance – The other person accepts me for who I am (doesn’t judge me as wrong or bad).

Openness – The other person says exactly what they are thinking and how they are feeling. There are no hidden agendas. Authenticity – The other person is not pretending about anything. There is very little (if any) gap between what you sense about the other person, and what is going on internally for that person. Degree of Self-Focus is Low – The other person has MY best interests as a priority. This will increase trust.

Degree of Self-Focus is High – The other person has THEIR own best interests as a priority. This will reduce trust.

11. Say something like:

“It’s just a model, but gives us a good place to start when it comes to understanding trust”


12. Then ask the following:

“So now we have looked at each of these elements of Trust, which element do you think is most important for you when it comes to trusting another person?” Pause for five seconds, then “OK now turn to the person next to you and have a conversation with them about what that important element of trust looks like to you and why it’s so important to you”.

13. Now ask everyone to share what’s the most important element of Trust for them and why. This means all team members know what’s important to each person.

14. Then…“OK, so now we know a bit more about Trust, what are the implications for us as a team? How can we use this knowledge? What do we need to do?”

And facilitate a discussion about that (5 – 10 minutes). 15. Then finally wrap up using the discussion questions below:

x How did you find that session? x What did you learn about yourself? x What did you learn about your colleagues? x How can this help us as a team? x Do we need to make any changes to our Team Agreements because of this?

Conclusion:

You will not build a high-performance team without building a strong foundation of Trust. It will take time, but you can accelerate the process by following the activities in this programme. If you don’t spend some time up-front talking about what trust means (to each person), every time you mention the word trust it will remain a generic abstract concept.

When you break it down into the elements in the model in this session, team members can see exactly how they can become more trustworthy. They can actively do things to increase trust. Please run this session with your team as soon as possible.


Forming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Creating The Team Agreements

Objective:

x To discuss and agree on a set of “Team Agreements” that the team can use as a guide for how they work together.

x This simple set of agreements will give the team a solid foundation upon which to improve performance.

x If your team doesn’t have an explicit set of team agreements then team members don’t know what is desired / acceptable behavior, and what is not.

x When you have an explicit set of team agreements, then when team members behave in ways that are undesirable / unacceptable, then you can refer back to the set of team agreements.

x The key element of this session is that all team members “agree” to the set of team agreements that you end up with.

Facilitator Instructions:

General:

The session should take 30 – 60 minutes (Don’t rush it. It’s important that team members know that creating a set of Team Agreements is important).

Ideally, chairs will be set up in a semi-circle, one chair out front for the team leader, and one flip-chart available.

Specific: 1. Introduce the session by talking about the objectives (as above) 2. Ask the simple question – “So what are some ways of working or guidelines

that we should have so as to help us all work well together? Not technical things or processes, but rather the way that we are with each other.” Ask the team members to sit quietly for a few minutes to think about this and to note down some of the things they think of.

3. Then ask – “OK, so what do we think are some useful guidelines or rules for the way we work together?”

As the team members make suggestions, write down a few words for each on the flip-chart. Try and get to at least 7 – 10 suggestions at this stage.

4. Then take each suggestion and discuss it in more detail. Ask questions like – “OK, so what would this actually look like? How would we know it was happening? How would we know if it wasn’t happening?” The aim here is to get all team members to really think about what each agreement actually means for them. This will create a common understanding of each one and makes it real and tangible for them.


5. When you have discussed each suggestion ask “Is there anything that we have missed here? Anything else that would help us work better together?” If more suggestions come, discuss each one.

6. Using a clean flip-chart sheet, create a refined list of the team agreements. The aim here is to get it down to about 7. No more than 10. Suggested agreements include: Punctuality, Confidentiality, Openness, Participation, Listening and Respect, Responsibility (Do what you said you would do), Ask for support. Ask Questions, Say what you want to say, and Give Feedback.

7. Explicitly ask the team “Do we all agree to these agreements? Does anyone not agree to any of them?” If someone raises concerns then have a discussion about it. Don’t miss this step. It’s important. Particularly if/when team members step outside the team agreements at a later stage.

8. Thank everyone for their participation. Debrief using some questions like this:

x How did you find that session?

x How can we use these Team Agreements?

x How can we hold each other accountable for our agreements?

9. After the session, as soon as possible, stick that exact same flip-chart sheet with the finalized agreements on it, up on a wall, in a place that is most visible to the team. Perhaps a meeting room that you use. And take a photo of it and email this photo to all the team members too.

Conclusion:

Creating a set of agreements during the forming stage of your team’s development is very important. Please don’t assume that such simple agreements are obvious and everyone should just know to work with each other in those ways.

Having a discussion about these things early on will encourage great team-working type behavior and reduce unwanted behaviours. Please do this with your team as soon as possible.


Activity Facilitator Guide: Lifeline Dinner

Objective:

x For the team members to get to know each other better.

x To practice sharing more personal information.

x Doing this exercise will instantly improve the level of trust amongst the team members. It’s not the only thing to do to improve trust, but it will certainly be an important part of it.

Facilitator Instructions: This activity is ideally done over lunch or dinner as it is better done in a more relaxed environment. If you don’t have the opportunity to have lunch or dinner together as a team, it can be done as a separate activity. If you do this in a restaurant, try to organize a “private” dining area of some kind. Wherever you do the exercise, try to make it as private as possible. Getting ready: you will need to prepare post-its, roll of brown paper, pens (markers sharpies), wall space to which you can stick paper to. If possible prepare the room before people arrive, or prepare the paper on the wall as you task people with the activity. Draw a timeline on the brown paper. Select the dates you put on the timeline based on the average of the people in the room, so it could look like this: __1960_________1970_________1980___________1990_________2000________2010_____ Alternatively you could just stick the post-its to a wall in date order (as below). So no need for brown paper or drawing a line. Step One: Ask the team the following: “I would like you to write down 2 to 3 events in your life that shaped who you are today. Please use important events in your life (professional and personal), experiences that have had the greatest impact on you as a person and how you think and how you behave. For each incident, take one post-it and write down a few words about it. What were these events? What impact did they have on you? How do they still shape the way you are today? And please write the year of the event on the post-it too.” Step Two: place your post-its on the “Lifeline” on the wall in chronological order. Remind everyone about the team agreements and that:


“This is a safe environment. Everything we say stays in the group.” “OK, let me go first by sharing one of my stories…” Advice to the facilitator: ideally you start first; the more open you can be with the telling of your story, the better; this will set the tone for the rest of the activity and encourage people to disclose more about themselves…Then move to the start of the timeline for step three. Step Three: “OK, so Who’s first on our lifeline?” And let people go one after the over, allow for people to ask questions after one person has gone through their event (but don’t let the questions go on for too long or let it turn into any sort of challenge – keep it safe), and then ask the next person to share their story. One way to do this is for you the facilitator to sit close to the lifeline, so that you can take off the post-its, one by one, and hand each person their post-it as they are about to speak. Discussion: once all team members have been through telling their stories you can ask the following questions to spark a reflection and a discussion: “What was it like to share those experiences?” “What did you learn about this group? What was unexpected for you” “What impression of the group have you formed?” “How has it changed how you think and feel about each other?”

Conclusion: This exercise is about sharing personal experiences. It is an opportunity to get to know each other in a team outside of the daily professional activities. It will help create a sense of shared experience and bond between the members of the team.

Ideally, you could have a team dinner every 2 – 3 months, and do some sort of activity that encourages the sharing of personal information like this.


Chapter 3: Building High-Performance Teams – Storming

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video we’ll be focusing on the second stage of Tuckman’s model of team development. The Storming stage. You’ll learn three things here: Firstly, the things that you will see that will tell you that your team is in this second stage, Secondly, you’ll understand why those things are happening, And thirdly, what you can do to help the team whilst they’re in the storming stage, and how to move through it to the third stage of the model – the norming stage. Knowing these things is very important. And how you lead the team through this stage is very important too. If you ignore things in this stage, and try to avoid them, the chances are strong that your team will never get beyond it. You’ll never experience superior results. So listen carefully…- OK, so how do you know that your team is moving into stage two, or is already in stage two, the storming stage. Well…what you’ll see is some disagreement, some upsets, and some conflict between the team members, and even some conflict between them and you. This will specifically look like people arguing, over-reacting, blaming, gossiping, withdrawing and being silent. And generally just a rather negative atmosphere amongst the team. As this happens, you’ll see less politeness, less sharing of information, less of people offering to help each other. You may also start to see people being late for meetings. And your team meetings may feel uncomfortable. Some people won’t be saying anything. And others may be very forceful with their views and their questions. As the leader, you may feel yourself being challenged. The direction you’ve set and the approach you’ve taken may be questioned.


Now let’s think for a moment about why all this is happening…what’s really going on here beneath the surface? Basically, what’s happening here is that the polite mask that all the team members have been wearing during the forming stage, is starting to slip. Individuals are finding it harder to pretend that everything’s OK. The essence of this is that the team members don’t know each other well enough, trust each other deeply enough, or personally like each other enough, to allow for the differences in their values, opinions, priorities, beliefs, and behaviours, that exist between them. Because of these differences, their buttons are being pushed, and it’s causing them to react. And those reactions will look a lot like anger and frustration. But underneath that anger and frustration is the emotion fear. Fear of not knowing where they’re going. Fear that their team-mates might betray them. Fear that they might make mistakes and lose their jobs. Fear of wasting time and losing focus. And many other fears too. They simply can’t stop themselves from over-reacting when they feel these fears. Some people will become more aggressive and challenging. And others will become quieter. You will learn more about these reactive behaviours in one of the activity guides next to this video. So if all this is happening in stage two, the storming stage of the model, what does success look like for this stage, such that the team moves into stage three, the norming stage? These are the three main things that the team needs to achieve: Firstly, everyone needs to understand that disagreement and speaking up is a good thing. So long as it’s done in a safe and productive way. This helps to reduces those fears. Secondly, individuals need to become more aware of the things that push their buttons, and how they can manage their own behaviours when that happens. This helps reduce their fears too. And thirdly, everyone needs to know each other better, and trust each other enough, to feel comfortable about raising difficult issues. And to know that they will not be punished in any way for doing it. Again, less fear. As they get to know each other even better, they’ll also understand why the other people on the team think and behave in the ways that they do. They’ll respect each


other more. They may even get to like each other and start to enjoy spending time together. As the team leader, you absolutely set the tone here, and lead them on this learning process. Helping to reduce that fear and make it safe. It’s important for YOU to believe that healthy disagreement is a good thing, so that when it happens, you don’t over-react yourself, by arguing back, or by shutting it down completely. To be able to do this, it’s important for you to know what pushes your buttons, and how you normally react to disagreement and upset. And also to learn how to press your own pause button when you get triggered. And of course, you need to make disagreement a normal and healthy thing in the team. And not punish anyone for raising difficult topics. If you don’t do these things and you don’t facilitate the team through this stage two, you won’t get to stage three, and your team will just bounce between stages one and two. That’s not good. And the longer the team stays stuck there, the harder it will be to move them into stage three. It’s just like a stormy personal relationship. The longer it goes on, the more damage is done, and the harder it is to make it come good. So some specific things that you can do as a leader to facilitate your team through stage two:

- Encourage self-expression and disagreement. Ask for different opinions. Ask what people think.

- And as you do this, make it safe, make it OK.

- Practice using your own pause button when you get triggered. No one will speak up if you shout down the first person that does it.

- If you think that there’s unresolved conflict present or there’s important issues that are not being spoken about, name them and help resolve them. If you don’t do this, they won’t go away by themselves.

- When team members behave in an unacceptable manner. Name it and discuss it. And keep referring to the team agreements that you made in stage one. In fact, I would suggest that you have those team agreements stuck up on the wall in your meeting space

- If a team member is really challenging your authority as the leader, in a destructive or negative way, and keeps doing this, you need to do something about it. Don’t let this go on. Try and resolve it with them. Understand why they’re doing it. And explain the impact it’s having. If things don’t change, work with them on a plan with clear objectives for behavior change and performance improvement.

There are a number of activities that you can do with your team when you notice that they are in stage two.


Next to this video you’ll find simple one-page facilitator guides that will show you exactly how to do these activities with your team. So please download those facilitator guides and do those activities. You’ll immediately see improved results. Lastly then. Three things for you as the team leader to remember during this stage.

- Healthy disagreement is good. Encourage it.

- Do what you can to create a safe environment for that disagreement.

- And keep finding ways for people to get to know each other better.

Good luck as you proceed through this stage with your team. It will feel uncomfortable for you at times. Just stay with that and keep pushing on till you get to the other side. I’ll see you in stage three - the Norming stage. The Activity Guides for the Storming Stage of Team Development are:

1. The Core Personal Leadership Skill (Find in Table of Contents) 2. Difficult Conversations 3. Laser Feedback

It is also strongly suggested that you watch the video titled “The Core Personal Leadership Skill – Pause Button” and do the accompanying activity with your team first.


Storming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Difficult Conversations

Objective:

For Team Members to:

- Acknowledge that there are some conversations that they find difficult to have.

- Realise that there is a cost / impact for the individual, team, and organization in avoiding having those conversations.

- Understand the reasons why some conversations seem difficult.

- Learn some basic principles to approach those conversations.

- And to feel motivated to go and have some of those conversations immediately (and perhaps even start to have them in this session).


General Points:

This session is important for you to have with your team. It introduces the phrase “Difficult Conversation” into the team’s vocabulary. And the phrase can then be used to encourage these important conversations to happen.

Room set-up for the session is a half-circle of chairs, with one chair out front for the team leader. Plus one flip-chart.

The session will take about 60 – 90 minutes.

You will need to print off the two handouts at the end of this document. Enough for one of each handout for each team member and you.

For the following instructions, please feel free to use your own words in place of the ones suggested below, if you would like to.

Specific Process Instructions:

Step One: Introduce the session and talk about the objectives (as above).

Step Two: Ask a question like “So what do we mean when we say “Difficult Conversations”? What does that mean?” Then as you get replies from the team members, write those up on a flip-chart.

Step Three: Then ask a question like “OK, so what are the kind of conversations that we may find potentially difficult? Who might they be with? And what topics might they be about?” Then as you get replies from the team members, write those up on a flip-chart.

Step Four: Then ask a question like “So let’s look at these in a bit more detail. What do you think makes a conversation potentially difficult for us? What lies beneath the surface here that concerns us about the conversation?”


Then as you get replies from the team members, write those up on a flip-chart. You may get lots of different reasons. All of which may be valid.

The primary reasons are: The issue to be discussed is important for either/both participants in the conversation. There could be a difference of opinion about the issue. And there could be an emotional component present (I.e. one or other or both of you may feel the urge to “fight or flight”).

Step Five: Then say something like “OK so we’ve explored what Difficult Conversations are and why some conversations seem to be difficult. Now let’s think about what we can do to create the best possible outcomes when we have those conversations. What things can we do before and during such conversations that will help them go well?”

Then as you get replies from the team members, write those up on a flip-chart.

Step Six: Then introduce a simple exercise in the following way “OK, so now we know some of the things we could do to improve such conversations, let’s make this real and think about a potentially difficult conversation that we know that we need to have, but about which we are feeling uncomfortable. So think now about a conversation that you know you need to have quite soon, but about which you are feeling uncomfortable. It is a potentially difficult conversation for you.

And I am going to give you a simple template that you can use to help you think through how you might go about having that conversation. I am also going to give you another hand-out with the main principles for approaching such conversations.

Please sit quietly by yourself, think about the conversation that you need to have, and make a few notes on the template about how you might go about it.”

Then give out the two handouts and encourage team members to use all the space in the room. If people start talking, ask them politely to be quiet so that everyone can concentrate. Allow about 10 – 15 minutes for this.

You might also consider saying that they can think of potentially difficult conversations that they need to have in their personal life too. So then either professional or personal situations/conversations are fine.

If someone says they cannot think of one, then sit quietly with that person, and ask them about things that they feel are not going well on the team/project/with their work, etc. You will find something about which the person does need to have a conversation with someone else about, that they probably feel uncomfortable about.

In the highly unlikely event that most of the team say that they cannot think of conversations that they need to have that are potentially difficult, then you’ve got a different (but still good) problem and it would be valuable to challenge the team a little.

You could say something like “I must say I am a little surprised by this. Firstly, because I know that there are certain conversations that many of you need to have with other people, and secondly because I thought we all wanted to be open to learning and to participate in sessions like this…it seems like THIS is our difficult


conversation that we need to have…please help me understand what’s going on here?........”

Then don’t say anything until someone else does, and explore what’s really going on with the team in a non-judgemental and non-defensive way– for at least 15 – 30 minutes. Please don’t just end the session prematurely

Step Seven: Once everyone has made some notes on their template ask them to get into pairs and (without mentioning any names, unless they want to), discuss the potentially difficult conversations that they have been thinking about, and how they would approach it.

Also suggest that they practice the conversation with their partner during their time together. At least the first few opening lines. This will make a big difference if they can do this. It is important that they do this practice piece. They are far more likely to actually go and have the “difficult” conversation if they have practiced it.

Get them into pairs quite quickly and into their conversations. Leave them talking for about 10 – 15 minutes.

Step Eight: Get everyone back into the semi-circle and have an open general conversation using questions like:

- How was that exercise for you? - How do you feel now about having those conversations? - What have we learned here in this session? - What are the implications for us as a team?

Step Nine: Thank everyone for their time and participation and encourage them to go and have those conversations as soon as possible.

Conclusion: Conversations that we know we need to have, but feel they may be difficult, get in the way of improving performance - our own and that of the team. By understanding why some conversations seem difficult and by learning some simple ways to make them be safer and more constructive, we can be more confident about having them, moving on, and improving performance. When you notice that there are “difficult conversations” that are being avoided (by members of the team), discuss these with the individuals involved and encourage them to go have those conversations. Every “difficult conversation” that is not being had, is preventing you from maximizing the team’s performance. Good Luck!


A Structure for having Difficult Conversations You can use this template to plan and prepare for the conversation and as a simple structure to use during the conversation. You or may not want to actually use your preparation notes during the conversation. This is just a guide to help you. Don’t feel you need to rigidly stick to it. 1. Introduction: (How best could you start this conversation? What can you say to get

it going “safely”?) 2. The Facts: (What are you specifically talking about here? What did you observe

happened? Or what was measured has having happened? Can you say these things without judgement?)

3. Impact: (What was the impact/cost of what happened AND how did you or do you

feel about it? What other impacts were there? Be specific.) 4. Suggestions: (What ideas and suggestions do you BOTH have to help improve

things? Make it a dialogue.) 5. Actions: (What actions will be taken, by whom, and by when? Have you both

explicity AGREED to this?) So now you’ve thought through and prepared for this conversation, when will you have this conversation with the other person?


Storming - Activity Facilitator Guide: Laser Feedback

Objective:

- To better understand how our colleagues see us

- To start the habit of giving and receiving feedback

- To learn ways that we can improve our performance

- To feel appreciated by our colleagues for what we do


General Points: For a team of 7 to 10 people, the session will take about 90 minutes. This is a very powerful process. It has been used very successfully 1000s of times. It’s simple once you understand how it works. But you do need to read through these instructions and ensure you have a good idea of the process. You may choose to run this session by itself, or use it as part of a workshop with other sessions. If you do the latter, position this session about half-way through the day. Please don’t shy away from doing this session with your team. It may be a little uncomfortable the first time, but after that it will get better and better. Once you set up and introduce the session and explain how it will work, get the team members into making their notes on the handout quite quickly. The more time you take up front, the more resistance there may be to doing the exercise. So frame it up, explain the benefits of feedback, and get them into the handout. In the highly unlikely event that certain team members simply refuse to participate, have an open conversation about why they feel that way and what their concerns are. If your team cannot give each other simple feedback in this very safe format, then they will never become a high-performance team. So you need to understand why they might not want to do it. The most likely reasons for someone refusing, is that they are worried about their colleagues highlighting the things (that they already know) that they need to change, or they don’t want to tell certain people what they think/feel about them to their face (but might rather be doing it behind their back). But so long as you hold the intention that the session will go well and are confident as you set it up, it will be a great session.

Preparation:


Write up two flipcharts with the Feedback Sentence Starters on them (See below for exact wording to use). But keep those flip-charts covered up until the exercise part of the session. Ideally the room set-up should just have a half-circle of chairs, with one chair out front for you, and the two flipcharts.

Specific process instructions:

1. Introduce the session by talking about the objectives (as above).

2. Then ask questions like: “What are some of the reasons that we sometimes don’t want to give feedback to each other? What can get in the way?” And discuss the answers that are given.

The main reasons are: Not wanting to hurt the other’s feelings. Not wanting to make things worse. Feel uncomfortable doing it, etc.

3. Then talk about how giving and receiving feedback is one of the main ways that ordinary teams become high-performance teams.

4. Then say: “And so to make giving and receiving feedback as simple and safe as we can, we are going to use a simple consistent format for giving feedback to each other”.

Reveal the two pre-drawn flip-charts with the feedback sentence starters on them as follows:

“What I appreciate about you is…” (Chart on the left). “And how I feel you could be even more effective is…” (Chart on the right). Explain that these words have been specifically chosen to give the best results and to make it as simple and safe as possible.

5. Hand out the preparation templates and explain: “Write all your colleagues names down the left column of the page, then in the second column right down the things that you appreciate about each person on the list, and in the third column right down a few things that you know would make each person even more effective. Try and be as specific as you can with the points you write down. And please don’t just write things down like “I feel you would be even more effective if we got to know each other better. This is not feedback.”

“Even if you don’t know someone that well, there is always some useful feedback that you can offer them. Please don’t use this as an excuse. OK, let’s sit quietly and complete this handout”

6. Then just leave everyone to sit quietly for probably about 15 minutes to write down their feedback for each person on the handout. If people start to talk, ask them politely to please remain quiet so that everyone can concentrate.

7. Please Note: As the Facilitator of this exercise, you will not be able to participate (ie. Give and receive feedback). This is because you need to give the instructions, pay attention to timings, and where you are in the process. If you as the Team


Leader want to participate, then you will need to get someone else to be the facilitator.

8. Then when everyone has finished making their notes, explain that “How this is going to work is that we will all sit in pairs and give each other our feedback, then we will switch pairs and give our feedback to the next person. And we will continue switching pairs until we have given our feedback to everyone.” Pause….”So everyone go find your first partner and sit in chairs facing each other. Let’s use all the space in the room.”

9. Once they have all found pairs (there may be a spare person each round), then say something like “OK, So now choose who will be person A and who will be person B”. Wait for a few moments for them to do this. “So each person will have 90 seconds to give their appreciative feedback to each other, then the other person will give their appreciative feedback for 90 seconds. Then the first person will give their improvement feedback to the other person for 90 seconds. Then the second person will give their improvement feedback for 90 seconds. All you need to do is listen to my instructions.”

Then just work through the next four steps and use a stop-watch to time each 90 seconds. And keep a track of where in the four-step process you are.

10. “So Partner A gives feedback to Partner B. “What I appreciate about you is…go”. Wait 90 seconds, then…

11. “Thank you. Please stop. Please stop. Now Partner B gives feedback to Partner A. “What I appreciate about you is…go” Wait 90 seconds then…

12. “Thank you. Please stop. Please stop. Now Partner A gives feedback to Partner B. “And how I feel you could be even more effective is…go” Wait 90 seconds then…

13. “Thank you. Please stop. Please stop. Now Partner B gives feedback to Partner A. “And how I feel you could be even more effective is…go” Wait 90 seconds then…

14. “OK. Thank you. Please Stop. Please Stop. Now thank your partner. Stand up and go and find another partner. Go find another partner.”

15. And then you just repeat the Four-Part process as above until everyone has given feedback to everyone else.

16. Then debrief the process by asking the following questions:

a. How did you find that experience?

b. What did you learn from doing it?

c. Which type of feedback was easiest/hardest to give? And to receive?

17. Then say something like: “OK, so thank you all for really getting stuck into that exercise. I know it felt a bit uncomfortable to start with, but you all did brilliantly. We will get into the habit of doing this regularly, but in the mean time, let’s not wait for sessions like this. Let’s offer each other feedback much


more often. When we see each other doing something great, lets acknowledge each other. And if we see our colleagues doing something that is not helpful, or could be done in a different/better way, then also offer your feedback then too. That’s just what high-performance teams do. Once again, thanks so much for your participation here”.

18. And repeat this session about every three to four months. As the team gets more used to doing it, the quality of the feedback that they give each other will get better and better.

You may also consider using exactly the same sentence starters, but rather than in a paired one to one situation, the team can sit in a circle and give the feedback in that way. Have a look at the Activity Guide for this “Group Feedback” session in the Norming Stage part of this programme.

Conclusion: Giving and receiving feedback is a habit for a high-performance team. Quality, timely feedback makes the learning and improvement cycle spin faster. As the team leader you would be wise to start role-modeling giving feedback and asking for it as much as you can. Both so that you learn how to improve and so the team members feel that it is OK to do the same. Good Luck!


Chapter 4: Building High-Performance Teams – Norming

Video Transcript Hello there, This video is all about the Norming Stage of Tuckman’s Team Development Model. This stage comes after the Storming Stage. If your team has been in the Storming stage for some time now, you’ll probably feel relieved that they are emerging on the other side and moving into this Norming Stage. In this video you’ll learn three things:

- Firstly, what the characteristics of the Norming stage are, so that you’ll recognize when your team is moving into this stage.

- Secondly, what the main things are that the team should focus on during the Norming Stage, the things that need to be in place such that the team moves into the Performing stage and doesn’t just get stuck. Because, your team won’t automatically move into the Performing Stage. Some specific conditions need to be in place.

- And thirdly, you’ll learn how YOU can be as the team leader during this stage. What kind of leadership styles will work best for you here.

So let’s start by looking at the Norming Stage in more detail. You can tell you’ve arrived in this stage when you notice the following things:

- You’ll see progress on results. Maybe not as much as you’d like, but progress nonetheless.

- The team members are having far less upsets and destructive conflict. There’s a better atmosphere. There’s more acceptance.

- You as the team leader are getting challenged less. People are supporting you more. There’s more alignment.

- You’re regularly hearing words like Pause Button, Feedback, Team Agreements, the Iceberg model, and other phrases that you’ve introduced from this programme.

- During team meetings, people are listening to each other far more and they are asking more questions.

- You’ll also start to notice team members making more suggestions about how to make improvements.

- Things just feel a little easier – a bit more fluid.


Now let’s think about why you’re seeing these things. What’s happened so that the team is in this Norming Stage? Well, firstly…they’ve all experienced the emotional ups and downs of the Storming stage together. Some have felt embarrassed when they’ve realized that they’ve over-reacted and been aggressive. Others, who would normally be quiet, have risked speaking up and saying things that they needed to say. Some personal-truths have been spoken. The sensitive but very important issues have not been avoided. They’ve been openly discussed. It’s felt uncomfortable at times. But you’ve stuck together and worked through the difficulties. Secondly….everyone knows a LOT more about themselves and each other. Knowing more about themselves means they’re far better at managing their own behaviours. And knowing more about each other, far more than they would normally know about their work colleagues, means that they understand why their team-mates behave in the way that they do. They also like each other more. And have greater trust for each other. And thirdly…they’re starting to feel like they are a part of something bigger than themselves. A group of people that they like. That they feel some affection for. And that they want to continue to spend time with. To achieve something significant with. They’ve emotionally invested themselves in this group of people. Now then…what things does the team need to put in place such that they increase their chances of moving into the Performing Stage. Like I said you won’t automatically move into the Performing Stage. And it won’t just happen by accident. There are some specific conditions that need to be present for that to happen.

- Feedback needs to be happening very regularly. Both spontaneously in the moment, and also more formally as a team. If you’re not noticing the team members giving each other regular high-quality feedback, and you yourself are not asking for and giving feedback regularly, then, very simply, your team won’t move into the Performing Stage. Feedback speeds up the learning cycle, and performance only improves when we learn more.

- Team problem solving needs to be very effective. This looks like coming together as a group to work on each other’s problems and issues. It looks like lots of listening and asking questions. It looks like offering support to each other, and then actually following up with that support. People are asking for help in this way from the team. They’re not just keeping things to themselves.

- Also, each individual needs to feel like they are developing some real competence in their particular area of expertise. That they are learning, growing, and developing. Both personally and professionally.

- And the team’s expectations need to have been raised. They want to do more, be more, and achieve more. Their level of inspiration and motivation needs to have increased to the level that it’s almost self-sustaining. You’re no longer trying to push, or even pull them along. The team’s just moving by itself. But you do need


to have done a little nudging to get them to this point – through the Norming Stage.

On that point, let’s now talk about you and your leadership during the Norming Stage. What would be the best way for you to lead during this Stage? Well, let’s think about it. During the Forming Stage you were quite directive. During the Storming Stage you were facilitative, but also quite challenging. Now, during the Norming Stage, it’s probably best for you to be a bit more like a Coach and Delegator. A bit more hands-off. Certainly not micro-managing. Most importantly, that is if you do want the team to get to the Performing Stage, it’s a good idea for you to not get complacent. To not think that “you’ve arrived” and things will just be easy from now on. Remember, the Storming Stage is just behind you, and it won’t take much for the team to slip back into that stage. So remain aware, remain awake. Don’t forget your Team Agreements. Don’t forget to ask for and give feedback. And keep planting those high-performance seeds. Planting possibility. Raising the bar. Remember, your team won’t automatically move into the Performing Stage, but they might slip back into the Storming Stage. So if your goal really is to create a high-performance team, then this is where you need to pay attention and do those things that have been suggested here. Imagine that the Norming Stage is about continuing to embed the good habits that the team has already learned. Adding a few more high-performance behaviours, and embedding those too. And practicing all of them again and again such that all those habits are just the way the team works. The way that you do things. When this is the case, you’ll be ready to move into the Performing Stage. Next to this video are some activities that I strongly recommend you do with your team. To embed those additional few high-performance behaviours. If you know that they are in the Norming Stage, then please start doing these activities as soon as possible. Not in a month’s time when things have quietened down. But right now. They’re not extra things for you to do. They are just things that will help you do what you already do, but in a new way. And anyway, by now your team is used to you introducing new ideas and processes. So it shouldn’t take much convincing on your part. Just send them an email, tell them you’d like to try out some new ideas, and you’d like everyone to meet up tomorrow or the day after, for an hour and a half to do this. Easy! So please have a look at those activities now. Each one has a facilitator guide to show you exactly what you need to do.


Lastly…I acknowledge you for coming this far. Getting through the Storming Stage is difficult. Well done you for making that happen. So take a breath, pat yourself on the back. And then get into those activities for the Norming Stage. And when those new behaviours are embedded and happening all by themselves, that’s when your team is starting to transition into the Performing Stage. And that’s when things start to get truly life-changing. So I look forward to seeing you there. Good luck.

Please note: The suggested activities to do with your team as you transition into the Norming Stage are: The 80-20 Principle, Action Learning, and Group Feedback. Please look at the table of contents in this guidebook so you can find those activity guides and the video transcripts that accompany them.


Chapter 5: Building High-Performance Teams – Performing

Video Transcript Hello there, This video is about the Performing Stage of Tuckman’s team development model. You’ll learn about three main things: Firstly, what the performing stage looks like, so that you know if your team is in it, or at least moving into it. Secondly, you’ll learn about how to keep the team in this Performing Stage. The things that the team can do to stay in this zone of high-performance. Thirdly, you’ll learn how you can be as the leader of the team in this stage. The ideal leadership style. Let’s start by stating the obvious. Not all teams will get to the Performing Stage. Your team will not just automatically move into it. But…if you’ve been doing the activities suggested in this programme and you’ve embedded those team agreements into your day-to-day behaviours, then there’s a good chance that you can make it to this stage. So how will you know that the team is in the Performing Stage? Well, you’ll start to see the following things:

- Most obviously, the team’s results will be very noticeable. Noticeable as in…great. Others in the organization will be seeing this.

- The team is starting to come up with truly game-changing insights and ideas. And taking action on them quickly.

- And talking of results and insights, the team wants to keep getting better, and achieving more.

- They’ve wholly integrated the 80-20 principle and apply it everywhere. Identifying the most important things to work on to achieve the biggest results. They don’t ever work on the trivial stuff.

- And they just get on with doing what needs to be done with very little need for supervision by you.

- They resolve their own problems and they have a high level of self-motivation.


- They each have a high level of competence in what they do. They have significant expertise and knowledge.

- They feel a deep sense of pride to be a member of the team and the team has it’s own identity.

- And they support each other without question. - Other highly talented people will want to join the team and other managers

might even be trying to poach your team members. And why are those things present? Well, mainly because you as the team leader enabled this to happen by practicing all the activities suggested in this programme.

You set up clear goals, objectives, roles and responsibilities in the Forming Stage. You also had the team create a set of Team Agreements, that were put up on the wall and that you referred to often.

You showed the team how to have difficult conversations and resolve conflict during the Storming Stage. This also meant that the team members started looking at themselves and their own reactive behavior.

At that point, you also made Feedback a major theme of the way the team operated. This sped up the learning cycle significantly. You encouraged each team member to become an expert in their area of specialization.

You introduced the team to Action Learning as a way to solve problems. And as they used it, they got much better at asking great questions and listening to each other. And this allowed brilliant ideas to emerge. You introduced the 80-20 principle to the team too. And used it to identify the vital few things that the team can do, to have the biggest impact and create the most value. And now everyone feels truly inspired to achieve the team’s goals. They feel motivated by their own development and the level of autonomy that they have. And because they know each other so well, the level of trust is very deep. So now, how does the team stay in this place, this zone of the Performing Stage? Because if you get complacent and think that “you’ve arrived”, you can bet that somethings going to come along and knock you all the way back into the Storming Stage. Well, here are three things that will help keep the team in the Performing Stage: Firstly, “Keep Raising the Bar”. Secondly, “Keep the Personal Development going”. And Thirdly, “Keep Improving the Team’s Processes”. Let’s look at each of these.


Starting with “Keep Raising the Bar”. As human beings we perform at our best when there is a challenge for us. Something important and meaningful. Not too easy to achieve (otherwise it wouldn’t be a challenge), but not too hard either. Otherwise we won’t believe we can achieve it, and therefore not put in the effort we need to. For you as the leader this looks like you starting to use the language of possibility when you’re with the team. Asking questions that have the team members start to think about what could be possible. What’s not been tried yet. And to challenge some basic assumptions and limiting beliefs. Keep challenging the constraints that people think they have. To ask “Why can’t we do that?”. So you’re always looking for results, goals, and outcomes that challenge the team. Neuroscience has proven that the physical body changes in response to us just imagining ourselves performing a certain activity and achieving a certain result. This is why high-achieving athletes spend time visualizing their performances. And this is what you can encourage your team to do too. Keep planting those seeds of possibility in the collective mind of the team. As this happens they’ll adjust their day-to-day thoughts and behaviours in line with these raised expectations. In terms of the second point - “Keeping Personal Development Going”. A core part of what makes us feel motivated is for us to feel a sense of mastery. A sense that we are becoming better and better at what we do. So it’s really important that every team member feels like they’re learning and growing. Both personally and professionally. Becoming more aware of themselves as human beings, and also becoming more competent and knowledgeable in their jobs and roles. This will give them huge self-confidence, and it increases the teams overall competence. Specifically, this is you supporting them to develop themselves – whether through self-study, group learning opportunities like workshops and courses, or creating on-the-job learning objectives with them. Discuss with each team member their individual learning goals and create a plan together to support and achieve these. You can then regularly check in with them on this and update the plan when learning is accomplished.


Remember…performance and results are not about the hours that your team put in at work. It’s about how much value they add when they are working. Taking time to learn and develop will help them do this. And thirdly then, “Keep Improving the Team’s Processes”. This is like the internal wheel of learning and continuous improvement. This forces you and the team to consciously look at your own processes (rather than just forget that they are there). This reminds you about them and also forces you all to think about how to improve them even more. This also means that when new people join the team, they are quickly made aware of the way that you do things and why you do them in that way. This is like taking the helicopter view of how the team works. And looking for ways to improve it. Things like improving meetings, improving problem solving and decision making. Improving how you engage with stakeholders. Improving how new team members come on board. Improving how you apply your team agreements. Such things may seem unimportant, but they’re not. Small process improvements can have a massive impact over the course of time. Let’s now look at how you can be as the Leader during the Performing Stage. What sort of leadership styles do you think will be most effective? Well, the simple answer is this. You need to use whatever leadership style is most appropriate for the situation that presents itself to you. Sometimes Visionary. Sometimes Directive. Sometimes Facilitative. Sometimes the Coach. And often giving appreciative feedback, and saying well done and thank you. Having said that, I think you have two main roles to play and these will influence what style to use. Firstly, be inspiring through your sense of vision and possibility. You’re continually challenging the team to raise the bar and improve performance. Other team members may be doing this too. And that’s fine. But it is one of your primary roles. Secondly, and this one’s a bit more tricky, is for you to maintain the high standards that the team has worked so hard to build up. Don’t ignore the basics, just because the team has become more successful. This looks like you noticing when people are not behaving in line with the team agreements and the other approaches that you have developed. And then calling them out on it. Giving them feedback and reminding them about standards. Such as not letting them check email during meetings. Not letting them arrive late for meetings. Those basic things remain important. And because you will all know each other so well by this stage, you may find it even harder to hold each other accountable. But this would be a big mistake.


Everything that you’ve learned and applied from this programme remains valid and important in the Performing Stage. So along with raising the bar, your role is to maintain the high standards of behavior on the team. This just requires you to keep your eyes open, notice any discrepancies, and remind people to maintain standards. So imagine that one moment you’re participating in a problem solving session just like the other team members. The next moment you’re challenging them to think bigger and raise the bar. And the next moment you might be reminding one of them to pay more attention to the session and stop checking their email on their phone. All of this is necessary and appropriate. Next to this video you’ll see facilitator guides for some activities and exercises that you can do with your team during the Performing Stage. The activities will help you and your team to keep challenging yourselves, to keep developing yourselves, and to keep looking for improvements to the team processes and approaches. Please download the facilitator guides and do the activities with your team. Lastly then, if you’re in the Performing Stage with your Team, then all I can say is well done. Truly. Well done. Not many teams will get to this stage. So you really deserve recognition for what you’ve achieved with your team. Thank you for applying what you learned on this programme. Thank you for trusting in this process and listening to the suggestions. And now you know how to build a high-performance team, you can do it again and again. Each time will be different. Different situations and different people. But the principles will remain the same. So don’t get complacent. Keep looking for what’s next. And keep maintaining those high standards. Good luck.


Activity Facilitator Guide: Raising the Bar

Objective: - To broaden the team’s thinking about what’s possible to achieve

- To identify and challenge limiting assumptions and constraints

- To start to describe, visualize, and understand the next level of performance for the team

What success look likes for this session:

- Expanded sense of possibility

- Feelings of excitement, inspiration, and motivation

- A “picture” of what the next level of performance looks like

- Some specific next-steps and actions to take to move towards that next level


General Points: This session is the start of what will become an on-going conversation about how the team can continue to increase the value that it creates for the organization. Embedding a mindset of growth / innovation / continuous improvement. It is not just a one off “brainstorming” session. This is a relatively simple session to facilitate with the team.

It will take at least two hours, but you could spend a whole day discussing the ideas that emerge from the question List. Look at the Question List and decide how much time you want to invest in this exercise.

It is recommended that the team does this exercise every three months. Feel free to modify and adapt the flow of the session, and to adjust the questions on the list as you feel is appropriate.

The main thing is that the team has a productive conversation using some of the questions on the list or similar ones that you choose.

Specific instructions:

1. Before the session, the team members need to be informed about the date, time and location for the session. Ideally you could use an off-site location and include a team lunch or dinner. But if this is not possible, then find the best room space you can.

2. Print off enough copies of the Questions to bring with you to the session.

3. On the day, set the room up before the team members arrive. Chairs in a half-circle (with no tables in front). Chair out front for you the team leader. And at least two flip-charts.


4. When the team members have arrived, set-up the session: Welcome, Objectives, Some basic agreements for the session (You could just refer to your Team Agreements that you created in the Forming Stage).

5. Then give out the Question List. One for each person. And ask them to sit quietly for 10 minutes to read the questions, choose three of them, reflect on them, and write their answers in the spaces provided. If people start to talk, ask them politely to remain quiet so that everyone can concentrate.

6. When everyone has finished answering the questions they choose, have an open team discussion, working through each question one at a time. You could work through them in the order as per the questionnaire. Or you could choose the order in which you want to discuss them. Whoever has chosen and answered each question is to share their answers, thoughts, and ideas, about that question with the whole team – who all then engage with that question, make further suggestions, and ask more questions, etc.

7. Remind everyone to be open, to ask questions, and to listen.

8. Keep an eye on the time. It could be easy to get caught up on one question and spend all your time on that one. So you as the facilitator decide as you go along, how much time you want to spend on each question (and whether in fact you want to discuss all the questions during this one session).

9. As the discussions proceed, capture the important points and suggestions on the flip-charts.

10. If the session will continue beyond 2 hours, then take a break after about 1.5 – 2 hours for 15 minutes then resume your discussions.

11. At some stage you need to move into the decision making part of the session. Prioritise the suggestions and ideas, and decide which ones you will take action on. Including who needs to do what, by when, and how you will measure progress.

12. Capture these decisions on a flip-chart and ask someone to write them up into an email and send to all team members after the session.

13. Have a wrap-up discussion using the questions like:

x How did you find that session? x What did we learn? x How have we benefitted as a team by doing this?

14. Thank everyone for their time and contributions

15. Repeat this session at least every 3 months with the team.

Conclusion:

Raising the bar is an important part of being a high-performance team. The team always needs a challenge to be working towards. This is the team’s reason for being. It inspires and motivates the team members.


This simple session ensures that the team is continually thinking about “what’s next” and forces them to challenge their own thinking about what’s possible.

Good Luck!


Raising the Bar – Question List Please choose three of the questions from the list. Reflect on those questions and write your answers in the spaces provided. Then discuss your answers as a team and decide what actions to take.

1. What are the big problems / opportunities / ideas that the organization has right now that we could help with?

2. If we were to treble the value that we create for the organization, what might that look like / how would we do that?

3. What are the implicit (and taken for granted) assumptions that we have as a team that might be holding us back?

4. What constraints do we work within? How real are they?

5. Where have we failed / made mistakes in the last 12 months? What did we learn from them?

6. How could we take more risks?

7. What fears do we have about raising the bar and doubling / trebling the impact we have / value that we add to the organization?

8. What goals / results would really inspire and motivate us?

9. What goals / results do we really care about?

10. What would really make a difference for the organization?

11. What is a greater purpose for this team?

12. What is the biggest impact that this team could have on the organization?

13. How could we add significantly more value for our stakeholders / customers?

14. What is impossible for us to achieve? And why?

15. If the CEO was here with us, s/he would be challenging us to do what?

16. Achieving what with this team, would make you proud, and want to tell your friends and family?

17. What “achievement story” about this team would you like future managers of this organization to tell each other?


Activity Facilitator Guide: Inter-Team Collaboration

Main Objective: To further improve team (and organizational) performance by improving the collaboration with other teams in the organization. It’s unlikely that you will maximize the performance of your team without improving the way the team works with other teams (teams that they need to give support to, or need support from). Don’t wait for problems to arise between your team and other teams. Be proactive and start doing some of the following activities together with them as soon as possible.

General Points: The following specific instructions for an inter-team session are for just one of many activities that the two teams could explore together. It is also recommended that both teams (jointly / together) find ways to apply the other tools that have been suggested previously in this programme, E.g:

- A “Laser Feedback” session where individuals sit with their opposite numbers from the other team (or whatever combination of pairs is most suitable) and give each other feedback.

- Some “Action Learning” sessions focused on those topics which are most important to both teams.

- A session discussing the “Pause Button” and the “Iceberg model”.

- A joint team dinner event using the “Lifeline” exercise.

Objectives for THIS Session:

- To identify the problems that may exit between one team and another (and the impact and cost of those problems).

- To identify solutions that will solve those problems.

- To agree and commit to taking action on those solutions.

- To improve the relationship (and trust) between the two teams.

Facilitator Instructions: This session requires at least 3 hours / half a day. You could use a whole morning from 0830 – 1230, with a break at 1030, and have a lunch together afterwards. Or start at


1300, a break at 1500, and have dinner together afterwards. Or ideally, set the whole day for doing this session. Then you can be more relaxed about timings. If you can do this inter-team session offsite, then the results will probably be better. But if this is not possible, then just use the best room space that you can.

Specific Instructions for this Session:

1. Before the session – Both team leaders to discuss and commit to a “Programme” of inter-team performance improvement. Both team leaders discuss this with their own team members to gain buy-in and commitment. Also to clearly explain that the “tone” of the programme is about taking responsibility and being solution oriented - NOT about blaming and shaming.

2. Set the time and date for the first session together. Book a room / venue and communicate the arrangements to all team members.

3. On the day, set the room up before the team members arrive. Ideally a half-circle of chairs (with no tables in front of the chairs), two chairs out front for the team leaders, and at least two flip-charts and pens).

4. Write up in large font size the following three questions on two flip-charts (all three questions on each flip-chart. One flip-chart on the left and one on the right):

a. What specific actions and behaviours does the other team do that create problems for us? (List them).

b. What specific actions and behaviours do we do that may create problems for the other team? (List them).

c. How could we improve our collective performance? (Specific ideas and suggestions).

5. Important - Keep those questions on the flip-charts covered up until the teams get into the exercise.

6. When everyone has arrived, set-up the session: Welcome everyone. Set the Context. Set the Objectives (see objectives section above in this document). And set some basic working agreements for the session (Mainly highlighting the tone of taking responsibility and being solution oriented. NOT about blaming and shaming.) (10 minutes)

7. Divide into the two separate existing teams. Either staying in the same room but on opposite sides/corners, or one team to go to another room (in which case you will need two sets of the questions). Reveal the questions on the flip-charts. Sit quietly for 5 minutes for everyone to write down their answers to the questions on the flip-charts.


8. Each team to then discuss the questions and their answers. And then summarize their answers on one or two flip-charts. (30 minutes).

9. Bring the teams back together.

10. Each team gives their answers (on the flip-charts) to the other team. The teams review the other team’s answers, and ask questions for clarification. (Remember NO blaming and shaming!). Don’t allow this part to go on too long. (10 minutes)

11. Then the team’s are mixed up. Creating two (or more) mixed teams.

12. Each mixed team considers both lists of answers and creates a list of the main problems and obstacles that prevent the two teams working more effectively together. (30 minutes).

13. You may want to take a 10 minute break at this point.

14. They then present that list to the whole group and the group prioritises the problems / obstacles. (20 minutes).

15. Then back into the mixed teams again. Each team to focus on ONE of the problems / obstacles, to come up with: Problem definition, Root Cause/s, Solution Options, Actions. Who will take those actions, and by When. And how to measure progress. (45 minutes).

16. Those solutions are then presented back to the whole group for discussion, agreement, and commitment. (30 minutes).

Discussion:

At the end of the Session, have an open discussion using the following questions:

x How did you find that session?

x What did we learn about ourselves?

x How have we benefitted as teams by doing this?

x When shall we meet again to review progress and / or do some more team development together?


Conclusion:

Part of being a high-performance team in an organization is working well and collaborating with other teams. Your success is usually dependent on the success of other teams too.

If problems exist between your team and another, start to address this quickly, using the above exercise or another one from this high-performance team programme. But don’t wait for problems to arise. Be proactive and start improving inter-team collaboration just because it makes sense to do so.

If your team is in the Norming or Performing Stages of team development, then other teams have a lot to learn from your team too. A good way to further embed your own new approaches is to start to share these with the other teams that you interact with.

Good Luck!


Activity Facilitator Guide: Performance Review

Objective:

x To find ways to further improve the performance of the team (primarily about the way you work together as a team).

x And to make decisions about what improvement suggestions will be implemented.

What success look likes for this session:

x Lots of improvement ideas.

x A high level of openness and disclosure.

x Commitment to implementing what has been decided.

x An appreciation that doing this type of review is important.


This is a relatively simple session to facilitate with the team. It will take at least two hours, but you could spend a whole day discussing the improvement ideas that emerge from the team questionnaire.

Look at the Team Questionnaire and decide how much time you want to invest in this exercise. It is recommended that the team do this exercise every three months.

Specific instructions: 1. Before the session, the team members need to be informed about the date, time

and location for the session. Ideally you could use an off-site location and include a team lunch or dinner. But if this is not possible, then find the best room space you can.

2. You may choose to give the Team Questionnaire to all the team members before the session, so they have more time to complete it. Or you need to print off enough copies to bring with you to the session.

3. On the day, set the room up before the team members arrive. Chairs in a half-circle (with no tables in front). Chair out front for you the team leader. And at least two flip-charts.

4. When the team members have arrived set-up the session: Welcome, Objectives, Some basic agreements for the session (You could just refer to your Team Agreements that you created in the Forming Stage).

5. Then give out the Team Questionnaire. One for each person. And ask them to sit quietly for 10 minutes to read the questions, reflect on them, and write their answers in the spaces provided. If people start to talk, ask them politely to remain quiet so that everyone can concentrate.


6. If you gave out the questionnaire before the event, and everyone has completed it, then you can move straight into the next step.

7. When everyone has completed the questionnaire have an open team discussion, working through each question one at a time. You could work through them in the order as per the questionnaire. Or you could choose the order in which you want to discuss them.

8. Remind everyone to be open, to ask questions, and to listen.

9. Keep an eye on the time. It could be easy to get caught up on one question and spend all your time on that one. So you as the facilitator decide as you go along, how much time you want to spend on each question (and whether in fact you want to discuss all the questions during this one session).

10. As the discussions proceed, capture the important points and suggestions on the flip-charts.

11. If the session will continue beyond 2 hours, then take a break after about 1.5 – 2 hours for 15 minutes then resume your discussions.

12. At some stage you need to move into the decision making part of the session. Prioritise the suggestions and decide which ones you will implement. Including who needs to do what, by when, and how you will measure progress.

13. Capture these decisions on a flip-chart and ask someone to write them up into an email and send to all team members after the session.

14. Have a wrap-up discussion using the questions below.

15. How did you find that session? 16. What did we learn? 17. How have we benefitted as a team by doing this?

18. Thank everyone for their time and contributions

19. Repeat this session at least every 3 months with the team.

Conclusion:

Regularly reviewing how the team is working and looking for ways to further improve performance is an integral part of being a high-performance team.

Doing a review session like this prevents complacency and the gradual erosion of standards.

Even just a few (seemingly) small changes can have a big impact on team performance over the course of time.

Good Luck!


High-Performance Team Review Please reflect on the following questions and write your answers in the spaces provided. Then discuss your answers as a team and decide what improvements you will make.

How can we improve: The way we live our Team Agreements? The amount and quality of Feedback we give each other? The way we Solve Problems together? The effectiveness of our Meetings? The way we make Decisions? How we integrate New People into the team? How we engage with key Stakeholders? How we Collaborate with other teams? The level of Trust we have for each other? Our own Personal Development as individuals? Our Focus on what’s truly important? What else could we do to improve the performance of our Team?


Chapter 6: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Video Transcript Hello there. In this video you will learn about a very useful model that will help you build your own high-performance team. If you’ve ever been a part of a team that’s quite dysfunctional and wanted to know how to improve the team’s performance then you’ll find this very helpful. The model is called the Five Dysfunctions of a Team and it was created by Patrick Lencioni. I’ve been using this model for many years with the management teams that I’ve worked with. The model describes the main reasons why teams can become dysfunctional and gives you very clear ways that you can turn that situation around and become a high-performance team. So let’s get into the model now… As you would expect from the name, there are five parts to it. Starting at the bottom…the primary reason why teams are dysfunctional is an absence of trust. Very simply, the people on the team do not trust each other. They don’t know each other very well and they’re not willing or able to be open with each other. They pretend that everything’s OK and they’re not prepared to show their vulnerability to each other. So…in this model, when Lencioni is referring to trust he’s mainly talking about openness. People not being open with each other. Now, trust is more than just openness though. It includes things like reliability, acceptance, authenticity, and the amount of focus there is on one’s self. How trustworthy we are is dependent on how reliable we are, how accepting we are, how open we are, how authentic we are, and to what degree we are concerned with ourselves rather than the other person. Each of those components of trust you can improve if you choose to.


OK, so that’s the first dysfunction - An absence of trust. When there are low levels of trust amongst the team members, it leads to many other problems. You will know that this dysfunction is not a problem for your team when: People are being open with each other. When they are doing what they said they would do. When they’re accepting of each other’s differences. When they’re being authentic. And when they’re thinking more about each other than themselves. OK, so let’s now look at the second dysfunction. If trust is missing, then team members are unlikely to speak up and say exactly what they think and how they feel about things. There’s a Fear of Conflict. They worry about what might happen if they speak up. So they don’t. This means that meetings are boring. Everyone’s just nodding their heads. Going through the motions. And it leads to Artificial Harmony. It looks like things are OK. But they’re not. There’s no disagreements. There’s no challenge. You will know that this dysfunction is NOT a problem on your team when: People are speaking up during meetings and saying what they think and how they feel about things. And when there are good robust challenging discussions that lead to better decisions that people are committed to. Now if your team meetings don’t look like that, and the Fear of Conflict is present, then you can guess what happens when people leave those meetings. They probably don’t agree with the decisions that were made. They don’t really know exactly what direction the team is moving in. And they’re not committed to following up on actions that they’re meant to take. They go back to their work colleagues and complain. So that’s the third dysfunction. A Lack of Commitment…and it leads to Ambiguity. Because team members have not said what they think and how they feel about things during meetings. And the team has not had good robust challenging discussions about issues. Poor decisions get made, that people are not committed to. There’s little follow up. There’s no alignment. And energy is wasted. Team members don’t need to all agree on things to be committed. But they do need to have expressed themselves and been heard. You’ll know that this third dysfunction is NOT a problem with your team when you can see that people are following up on decisions and taking actions that they committed to. There will also be clarity about direction.


Now if there’s an Absence of Trust, a Fear of Conflict, and a Lack of Commitment, then it’s not surprising to see the fourth dysfunction: an Absence of Accountability. People are not holding themselves accountable for their own performance and behaviours. And they’re certainly not holding each other accountable for performance and behaviours. In other words, there’ll be very little feedback happening. People will turn up late for meetings. They’ll not be paying attention in those meetings - they’ll be checking their cell-phones. Deadlines will be missed. Actions won’t be taken. And there’ll be little or no consequences for those things. All this leads to low standards. And it’s all very unprofessional. You will know that this dysfunction is NOT a problem for your team when: The team members are giving each other high-quality feedback on a frequent basis. And specifically, when people are not behaving in line with your Team Agreements, other team members will be calling them out on it. And when this happens, the person receiving the feedback accepts it and knows that it is a good thing. Let’s now look at the fifth dysfunction… It’s not surprising that if all the other dysfunctions are present then you’ll see a Lack of Attention to Results. Particularly the collective results of the team. Instead people will be focused on their own performance. Their own status in the group and organization. On their own ego’s. It will all be about them as individuals. Trying to make sure that even though the team is a mess, they still manage to look good themselves. They’ll not be pulling in the same direction. The energy of the team will be dissipated in lots of different directions. They won’t be helping each other. They won’t be asking for help. They won’t be seeing opportunities to collaborate and create more value. You’ll know that this dysfunction is NOT a problem for your team when: You can ask all the team members what the most important goals of the team are, and they all give you a similar answer… AND you see them helping each other to achieve those goals. So there you have it. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, originally created by Patrick Lencioni. If you learn just one model to help you create a high-performance team it is this one. I’ve also adapted this model for you and framed it in more positive language. You could use this one too. A high-level of Trust. High-quality challenging discussions. High-level of Commitment and follow-up. Frequent high-quality feedback. And a Focus on a Few Collective Results.


Please introduce this model to your team. You could show them this video. Talk about it. Identify where your team needs to improve. And keep referring back to it. Next to this video, you’ll find some activity guides that you can download and use with your team. Building a high-performance team is not complicated. But that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You do need to do some development work with them. When you familiarize yourself with this simple model and keep talking about it with your team, you will see performance improve. So thank you for watching this video and good luck with your team.


The Five Dysfunctions* and Your Team…

Please watch the short video of the Five Dysfunctions of a Team (so you better understand exactly what each dysfunction means), then answer the three questions for each dysfunction for your Team.

Dysfunction: What evidence do you see of this Dysfunction in your team?

What can you do immediately to improve this?

What habit/practice can the team use to permanently improve this?

1. An Absence of Trust (A Lack of Reliability, Acceptance, Openness, and Authenticity).

2. Fear of Conflict (Artificial Harmony – People not saying what they think and how they feel about things).

3. Lack of Commitment (Ambiguity – Little or no follow up, gossiping).

4. Avoidance of Accountability (Low Standards – no feedback given on performance or behaviours).

5. Inattention to Results (Status and Ego – each individual acting for themselves).

* Based on the book – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni


Chapter 7: The 80-20 Principle

Video Transcript Hello there, In this short video I’ll share with you a principle so simple, yet so profound, that when you use it, you solve most of the problems that you experience as a leader and manager. After watching, you may never look at your working life in the same way again. If a silver bullet exists, this is it. And I will also give you some practical things that you can do straight away to put the principle into action. So let’s get started with a few questions…

x Do you find yourself with far too many things to do?

x Do you work long hours?

x Do you receive more emails every day than you know what to do with?

x Is your calendar filled up with lots of meetings that will probably be a waste of your time?

x Do you often feel stressed and overwhelmed?

x Do you feel unsatisfied with the results that you and your team are achieving?

x Do you feel stuck in your current job, without a clear view of how you’ll get

promoted? If you answered Yes to most or all of those questions, what I’m about to share with you will help you. Let me be direct and a little challenging with you… Are you happy to be like most managers and get stressed and overwhelmed by all the demands on your time? Follow the herd. Keep your head down. Answer all those emails. Go to every meeting. Jump every time your boss calls. And continue to feel stressed for the rest of your career? Or…are you prepared to make your own path and do things a little differently and in a far smarter way?


If you don’t find a way to solve all those problems, the rest of your career is going to be exactly the same. You won’t find much enjoyment in what you do. You won’t achieve the sort of results you’d like to. And years and years of stress will take it’s toll on your health and your personal life. Most managers don’t run their lives in the way that I’m about to share with you. And most bosses that you come across will not run their lives in this way either. But, none of that means you shouldn’t walk this path. Because this path leads to more happiness, improved results, faster career progression, and far less stress. Curious? The path I’m about to describe to you is based on one simple principle that you’ve probably already heard of. But I can almost guarantee that you’ve never considered this principle in the way I’ll describe to you, nor really taken it that seriously. And it makes everything you’ve ever heard about time management completely redundant. The principle I’m talking about is the Pareto Principle or the 80/20 Principle as it’s better known. The 80/20 Principle explains the relationship between Causes and Effects, between Inputs and Outputs, and between Activity and Results. And it simply states this. 80% of your results, your outputs, and the things you want, will be caused by only 20% of the things you do, the decisions you take, and the time you spend. And conversely, a whopping 80% of your time, decisions, and activities cause only 20% of your results. And please don’t get hung up on the exact numbers of 80 and 20. It could be 70 - 30, or even 95 - 5. Said in simple terms. Only a few things that you’re currently doing are giving you most of what you want, and most of what you’re doing is not very important.


In terms of causes and effects, the world isn’t balanced, or average, or 50:50, however much we’d like it to be, or however much we feel it should be. A vital FEW things cause the biggest results. And the trivial MANY things cause the smallest results. Since the principle was first published by Vilfredo Pareto in 1906, it’s been proven by research to be true in hundreds of situations. And it’s taught in all the business schools in the world. Let me give you a few specific examples to show you how this works: 1. 80% of the profits that your business makes will probably come from only 20% of your customers. Most of your sales are probably not very profitable, or may actually be losing you money. 2. 80% of your business’ value will be caused or created by about 20% of the people who work in it. Most of your employees or team members are not contributing that much to the total value. 3. Only 20% of the total emails, calls, and meetings that you attend to, generate 80% of the total value that you create. Most of the other 80% are a waste of your time and energy. Following this principle, it’s also logical to assume that the majority of managers spend most of their time on low value activities, and only a minority of managers spend most of their time on the most valuable activities. This is why that minority are the ones that get promoted. When you start to see the world through this lens, then life gets a whole lot easier. You’ll never be short of time again. You’ll never have too much to do. All of your time, attention, and energy, will be focused like a laser beam on the vital few things that create the biggest results. Two actions to make this real for you…

1. Download the template and spend just five minutes identifying where you’re bleeding time and energy, and where you should really be focusing your efforts.

2. Go explain the 80:20 Principle to your team, have a discussion about it, and identify where your team should be focused.

So, as I said, if you believe that even some of what I’ve share with you here is true, then you can either ignore it, and carry on as you have been, or you can actually start to think and act in accordance with it. Please, please, don’t finish this video and just go on to the next thing as if you haven’t heard anything.


That next email you’re about to answer, or the next meeting you are about to go to…is probably not that important when it comes to you achieving your results. It may seem important to someone else, but for you it’s probably not. Please don’t just follow the herd. Start to look at things through this 80:20 lens. Your Emails, meetings, phone-calls, decisions, other work activities you do, and your people. Start to develop and explore your own path. One that is far more rewarding and far less stressful. Thank you for watching this video. And good luck. NB: There are two activities for this video. The first one is a worksheet for you to complete from an individual perspective and the second one is do as a team.


The 80/20 Principle Worksheet (An Individual Perspective) This simple questionnaire will stimulate your thinking about how you can apply the 80/20 Principle in your work-life. There are no “right” answers. The questions are all signposts to using the principle to improve your performance, and leading a happier and more fulfilling life. Results: What is it you really want to achieve / create / build? What are the top three most important objectives for your job/role? What are the three most important measures of your success? What are the key results that you are expected to deliver? You: What are you better at than your peers or your boss? What are your strengths? How do those things contribute to the results you just wrote down? How can you build those strengths even further? In what other situations at work could you apply your strengths to add even more value? What are all the other things you do, that you should delegate to other people? People: Who are the few people that are most important in supporting you achieve those results? Which of your direct reports contribute the most to those results? How can you support them even more? How can you find more people like them? How much time do you spend on coaching / developing your direct reports? Time: Which are the most important (vital few) emails that you do need to respond to?


Which are the most important (vital few) meetings that you should attend and add value at? Who are the most important (vital few) people that you should accept calls from? What ways can you find to be away from the office / workplace to give you time to think? If I told you to reduce the hours that you “worked” by 30% what would you do to make that happen? Organisation / Boss: Do you enjoy being a part of the organization you work for? Does your boss give you the space and autonomy to work the way you want to? Is your organization growing, innovating, and expanding? If you are answered No to some or all of the above three questions, what are the implications for you?


Activity Facilitator Guide: The 80-20 Principle (Team Session)

Objective:

- Everyone has at least a basic understanding of the 80-20 Principle:

A vital few things have the biggest impact and results, and that most things are not that important.

- The team starts to look at it’s own objectives through the 80-20 lens and identifies activities and working routines that will deliver far better results.

- And the team identifies existing activities and working routines that are not adding value and that should be stopped immediately.


General Points: The 80-20 Principle, and the team’s application of it, is another ticket into the Performing Stage. Put simply, you will become a high-performance team when all your energy and attention is focused on the things that deliver the greatest results. You will not become a high-performance team by diluting your energy and attention on everything. Consider that many of the things that the team is doing now are probably not that important and are adding little value! When you and the team fully appreciate the power of the 80-20 Principle and are applying it in everything that you do, you will be in the Performing Stage. This session will take about 2 hours. Room set-up is a half circle of chairs, one chair out front for the facilitator, and at least one flip-chart. You will also need copies of the worksheet questionnaire (see below) - one per team member. Before the session, ensure that you as the leader / facilitator understand the basics of the 80-20 Principle (even if you think you already know what it is). Hint: It doesn’t just mean “stop working when you get to an 80% answer or end-product, and don’t waste time trying to get to the 100% answer”. Whilst that’s valid, It’s more profound than just that. Please watch the accompanying video about the 80-20 Principle. You will find it on the resources page for the Norming Stage of this course. You can show the video to your team at the beginning of this session too.

Specific Process for the Session:

1. Explain the context and purpose of the session (see objectives above).


2. Briefly explain what the 80-20 Principle is. You may want to show the above video to the team at this point as well. Then have a brief open discussion about the Principle so that there is a least a minimum collective understanding of it.

3. Hand out the worksheets (See Below), and ask the team members to sit quietly to write down their answers to the questions. This should take about 10 minutes. If people start talking, politely ask them to remain quiet so that everyone can concentrate on the exercise.

4. Then have an open discussion about the questions and their answers to each section. Working through section by section. Pay attention to time so as to avoid getting hooked in section one, and never getting beyond it.

That said, depending on the team’s answers to the questions, you may realize during the conversation, that you will need more time. In which case decide to focus only on a few sections and come back to the others another time. Or simply extend this session.

Remember the importance of asking great questions and listening to each other. Remind people of this if it just becomes people stating and advocating.

5. Make a note of any important learnings, conclusions, ideas, actions, and decisions that emerge during the discussion.

6. Then have a discussion about the implications of what you have all learned during the session:

a. What specific things does the team need to start doing?

b. What specific things does the team need to stop doing?

7. And finish the session with a quick discussion using the questions below.

x How did you find that session? x What did you learn about yourself and us as a team? x How have we benefitted as a team by doing this? x How could we use the 80-20 model going forward?

Conclusion: The 80-20 Principle has profound implications for the performance of the team. Their understanding and application of it, will impact results immediately. The two hours it takes to run this session and plant the seed of the 80-20 Principle is a very valuable use of your time. Good Luck!


Worksheet:

The 80/20 Principle This simple questionnaire will stimulate your thinking about how the team can apply the 80/20 Principle to improve performance / results. There are no “right” answers. Please write your answers in the spaces provided. Results:

x What are the three most important results that this team is to achieve?

x By when will those results be achieved?

x What else does success look like for us?

Strategy:

x How is the team trying to achieve those results now?

x Which strategies / approaches are most effective (yielding the greatest results)?

x What other ways could the team achieve those results?

x What strategies / approaches should just be stopped right now?

You:

x What is your specific contribution to the team achieving those results?

x What areas of skills, expertise, or knowledge are you more effective /

accomplished in, than your colleagues on this team?

x How can you apply and leverage those skills and expertise more than you do

now?

x What are the things that you do, that you could delegate to someone else, or stop

doing altogether (Because they add very little to your desired team results)?

People:


x Who are the few people that are most important in supporting the team to

achieve those results?

x How can you build an even better relationship with those few people?

x Which stakeholders are NOT that important to the team achieving its’ results

(but who seem to absorb a lot of the team’s time and energy)?

x And how should you change the relationship with those stakeholders?

Time:

x If the team could only work for three days a week, what would you do in those three days?

x And what things would you just stop doing?

x What ways can the team find to be away from the office / workplace to give

everyone time to think?

Decisions:

x What are the most important decisions that should be taken now?

x What decisions are being delayed and causing additional work and wasted

effort?

x What things should we just forget about for now?


Chapter 8: High-Performance Leader – An Overview

Video Transcript Hello there, This is the introduction video for the High-Performance Leader’s programme. In this video you’ll learn how the programme works and how you can use the materials. You’ll also get a very clear idea of what we are talking about when we say “high-performance leadership”. I will give you a very simple, yet powerful working definition that you’ll be able to remember and use. The other videos in this programme go into more detail about the three main elements of that definition. And there’s also a video about what you can do when things go wrong. When set-backs happen. When you face obstacles. The High-Performance Leader’s programme will give you the knowledge, skills, and confidence to significantly improve your leadership capabilities. It doesn’t matter whether you’re in your first leadership role or you’re the CEO of a large corporation. The principles in this programme are valid at all levels of position and experience. The programme is practical and relevant. Not full of academic theory. And all of the ideas and exercises that I will share with you have been tested with the thousands of leaders that I’ve worked with in the last twenty years. They’re proven to improve performance. Let me say right up front…you becoming a high-performance leader is not complicated. It’s very possible. But, that doesn’t mean it’s easy. You will have to do some work to get there. You need just one thing. You need to want it. You need to want to become a high-performance leader. And that desire will only come when you have a clear purpose and reason for doing it. That reason could be anything. It doesn’t matter. But when you have that purpose, that reason for wanting to become a high-performance leader, you will do what it takes to make it happen.


You’ll absorb all the content. You’ll do the exercises. And you will start to see your leadership improve. And others will notice that improvement too. How long will it take? Well if you want it enough and you apply what you learn in this programme, you will notice improvement within a few months. As you continue to apply the ideas, the mindsets, the behaviours, within a year there will be a significant improvement. Each module has a video like this one, an audio if you would like to listen rather than watch, and a set of activity guides for you to download and use. These activity guides give you very simple clear instructions for each exercise. Let’s now look at what we mean when we say high-performance leadership. Well… High-performance leaders…

1. Deliver significant performance improvement, 2. By influencing others to take actions (that they would probably not normally

take), 3. Whilst managing their own fears and concerns about the inherent risks,

uncertainties, and ambiguities.

Let’s look at each of those three elements. Firstly, “Deliver significant performance improvement”. We’re talking about making big stuff happen. Big improvements. Big results. Not just incremental changes. Big enough that it feels quite risky and quite difficult to achieve. Secondly then… “By influencing others to take actions (that they would probably not normally take).” You won’t make big stuff happen all by yourself. You will need other people to help you. And they will only do that and go the extra mile when you can influence them and they are motivated to take action.

This includes both those people that may report to you, and others with whom you have no direct control. And if your goal is big enough, it will likely require these other people to take actions that they probably wouldn’t take normally. It will be outside their comfort zone. And thirdly… “Whilst managing their own fears and concerns about the inherent risks, uncertainties, and ambiguities.” When you aim to achieve significant things, there will be risk and some fear present for you. The risk of failure and the risk of being rejected by other people that you work with. You need to be able to manage your own feelings of fear, and also help manage the concerns that others around you may have. If you don’t manage your own fears and concerns, it will prevent you from taking action and it will get in the way of influencing others.

So those are the three elements of being a high-performance leader. In this programme you will become an expert at all three.


This programme will not teach you about management type activities like measuring, controlling, planning, reporting, scheduling, ordering, checking, delegating and making short-term decisions. Those things may be required in order for you to achieve those big things, and from time to time you may need to do some of those things. But, it’s usually easier to find other people who can do those management type activities. That’s because managing is generally easier than leading and there’s usually a manual or set of instructions or procedures to be followed. Leadership however, requires taking risks (and most people don’t like doing that), and it requires influencing other people (and most people don’t really like doing that either). Leadership is a far more valuable skillset than management. So that’s what we’re going to focus on for you in this programme. Helping you become a high-performance leader. Like I said earlier - becoming a high-performance leader isn’t complicated. You can do this. The modules in this programme do follow one after the other, but feel free to jump around between them and do whichever activities and exercises seem right for you. Also, you may benefit from finding another manager that’s doing this programme too - and meeting with that person on a regular basis to help and support each other. Ok, enough of me talking. Now it’s over to you. Please dive into some of the other modules and start your journey to becoming a high-performance leader. Good luck and I’ll see you in the next session.


Chapter 9: High-Performance Leader - Impact

Video Transcript Hello there. In this video you’ll learn why the first thing we need to look at when it comes to high-performance leadership is, of course, delivering significant performance improvement. That’s the first part of our definition of high-performance leaders… They deliver significant performance improvement... …By influencing others to take actions …Whilst managing their own fears about the risks involved. So there’s two parts to that first line… The first part…They deliver. They make it happen. Not by themselves. They need the help of many others of course. But the important point here is that the result is achieved. One way or the other. They are responsible for making it happen. They don’t just hope and wish. The second part of that sentence then… is significant performance improvement. It’s big stuff that we’re talking about here. Important stuff. Not incremental change. Making big stuff happen requires leadership. We will cover three things in this module that will help you become an expert at this first part of being a high-performance leader: Firstly, we’ll talk about how you can have Maximum Impact – to get the biggest result you can. The most important outcome. Secondly, we’ll learn about Focus. Your focus. And why this is critical to achieving your goals. And thirdly, we’ll look at the word Responsibility – and why “your word – what you say” is such an important part of your leadership. It affects how other people see you and think about you. OK, so let’s start with Maximum Impact. How do you get the biggest bang for your buck? How do you decide on your Goal? How do you choose what it is you want to achieve?


Well sometimes it will just be given to you by someone else. Your manager perhaps. You can accept it or not. But ultimately you choose what you spend your time and energy on. Now, here’s the most useful tool that you can use to help you identify your goal – the significant improvement you want to make happen. You may have heard of this before, but probably not in the way that I’ll explain it. It’s called the 80-20 Principle or the Pareto Principle and it basically says this: “Only a vital few things deliver the biggest impact. Most things don’t matter that much.” So what are the vital few things that you could make happen in your organization that would have the biggest impact? Write down a list of all those things, the projects, the achievements, the objectives, that you could focus your time and energy on. Now look through the 80-20 lens at the items on that list. Which ones are the vital few things that will deliver the biggest impact? That are significantly more important than the others. OK…Now you have your shortlist. Look at it again. Which ONE thing on that shortlist is THE most important in terms of results. Which one thing will have the biggest impact? Because there’s always an 80-20 within the 80-20. There’s always the vital few within the vital few. So, now you’ve identified your ONE THING. As you consider that ONE THING it probably feels big, complicated, and risky. Good. It should do. You’ll only achieve it by becoming a high-performance leader. And you need that goal, that one thing, to motivate you to do what it takes to become that high-performance leader. OK, so you’ve not got your goal…Let’s now look at why your Focus is so critical. Imagine that how much you focus on achieving your goal or performance improvement is plotted on a line. At one end, you have very little focus on your goal. You occasionally think about it. But not often. You don’t pay much attention to it. And at the other end of the line, it is the only thing you think about - every day. Which of those situations is most likely to lead you to success? Pretty obvious right. Without focus, your goal is just a wish, a hope. It may happen by luck. But it probably won’t. However, with high-quality attention and focus, you’re far more likely to be successful. Now, I know you have lots of things that you’re meant to be doing. I get it. I really do.


But, you can’t fight the truth that you will only achieve big things when you focus on them like a laser. Imagine this. Every year you set yourself the goal of making something big happen. And every year you focus on it and you make it happen. You build yourself a reputation for having impact. Delivering significant performance improvements. And that’s why it’s so important that you’re motivated by the goal that you’re aiming to achieve. It needs to matter to you. It has to have a purpose for you. Because then you’ll want to focus your attention and energy on it. OK, so now let’s look at the word Responsibility. And why your relationship to “your word – what you say” is such an important part of your leadership. Most people don’t really think about what they say – especially the agreements, promises, and commitments that they make. They just say yes to whatever is asked of them. They don’t think about what they are saying yes to. So what happens? They have too many things to do. They are unreliable. They turn up late. They don’t do what they said they would do. They don’t deliver. As you become a high-performance leader, you’ll start paying much closer attention to what you say. What you agree to. What you promise. What you deliver. You will say No more often. You will worry less about offending people. And you’ll start to notice how responsible other people are too. You’ll notice what their relationship to their word is. As your sense of responsibility increases, you’ll become much more reliable. People will have more respect for you. They’ll trust you more. They’ll know that you will do and achieve what you say you will. You’ll further build your reputation for delivering significant performance improvements. And because your relationship to your word is so important to you, you’ll do whatever it takes to deliver. So those are the three components of that first part of our definition of a High-Performance Leader.

1. Maximum Impact 2. Focus 3. Responsibility

All three lead you to “Delivering significant performance improvement”. Next to this video you’ll find activity guides that give you some simple exercises that you can do to reinforce those three components. In the next video in this programme we’ll talk about the second part of our definition: …By influencing others to take actions So, good luck and I’ll see you in the next session. NB: There are four activity guides for this video (You will find them below).


1. How to have Maximum Impact 2. You and Your Goal (More detailed version of 1.)

3. Your Focus 4. Taking Responsibility (Please note that there is also a video all

about the importance of Responsibility. The transcript for this video is towards the end of this guidebook.)


How to have Maximum Impact… We all have lots of things we could, should, want, or need to do. But to have maximum impact we need to identify the MOST important things to focus our attention, energy, and resources on. This simple template will help you do this. Please make your own notes and answers to the following questions: List all the things that you could, should, want, or need to achieve in the next 12 months…

Which 3 – 5 of those things are the MOST important (in terms of adding value to the organization)?

What is the ONE thing that is the MOST important (in terms of adding value to the organization)?


You and Your Goal… This simple activity guide will help you to choose the performance improvement you want to make. Please make notes and answer the following questions. Choosing your main goal is not a science. There is not a formula. As you answer the following questions, one goal will emerge for you that will be both important and impactful, and that you feel motivated to achieve. Whatever it is, you do need to “want” to make it happen, else you won’t spend the time and attention on it that it requires.

1. Make your big list…

x What are all the things that you could do?

x What are all the things that you want to do?

x What are all the things that you need to do?

x What are the things that you could achieve that would have the greatest impact?

x What are the big things that you know would make make the most positive difference to the team/department/business?

2. Now create your short-list…

x Select the top five things on that list that would have the biggest impact (value created – tangible benefits to people, time/money saved, money made) when they are achieved.

3. Now choose the ONE THING…

x What’s the ONE THING on that list that will have the biggest impact to the team/department/business?

Criteria for the ONE THING:

x Does the thought of working on achieving that one thing scare you a bit?

x Will it require you to step outside your comfort zone, at least sometimes?

x Will it make you proud to achieve that one thing?

x Will you learn and develop yourself in the process of achieving it?

x Do you find it interesting / motivating / worthwhile?


Your Focus… In order to achieve your main goal, your one thing, you will need to focus your time and attention on it. The following questions will help you do this. Please write down your answers in the spaces provided.

x What is your main goal, your one thing?

x Why is that important to you?

x How much time do you spend on making progress towards your main goal right

now?

x How can you arrange your diary such that you spend the first 90 minutes of every working day making progress towards your main goal?

x What things do you need to delegate to other people to do?

x What things do you just need to ignore?

x Who are the most important people that can/will help you achieve your main

goal?

x How can you spend more time with them on a regular basis?

x Who are the people that you seem to be spending a lot of your time with now, but who have little contribution to make to you achieving your main goal?

x How can you stop yourself getting sucked into conversations and situations that

do not contribute to you achieving your main goal?

x How will you know that you are making progress to achieving your main goal?

x What are the things that you need to just stop doing?

x What are the meetings that you just need to stop going to?

x Where in your daily / weekly diary do you have time to just think?

x What decisions do you need to make in order to focus on your main goal, your one thing?


Taking Responsibility… Area of Life:

What part of this area of your life are you frequently complaining about, or blaming someone or something for?

How can you take more responsibility? What is Your part in it? What can YOU learn about you in this situation? Why have YOU created this? What can YOU do about this?

Your Work / Business / Career?

Your Personal Relationships?

Your Finances?

Your Health?


Chapter 10: High-Performance Leader - Influence

Video Transcript Hello there. In this video you’ll learn how to become an expert at the second part of our definition of being a high-performance leader. [They deliver significant performance improvement...]

…By influencing others to take actions […Whilst managing their own fears about the risks involved.]

If you’re aiming to deliver significant performance improvement, then you can’t do this all by yourself. You will need other people to help you. And you’ll probably need those people to take actions that may be outside their own comfort zones.

We’ll look at three things here that will encourage people to help you and take action in support of the performance improvements you want to make. Firstly, you’ll learn how to rapidly build trust with the people that you need to help you. Imagine that I am one of those people for a moment. If I trust you, I may help you.

Secondly, you’ll learn how to motivate and inspire those people with a simple yet powerful story about what it is you’re aiming to achieve. Why it’s so important. And how they can be a part of it. If you have a compelling story that I find motivating, there’s even more chance that I’ll help you. Thirdly then, you’ll learn how to coach and develop those people that you will need to work with and support you. If you help me to learn and grow, it’s very likely that I’ll help you achieve your goals too. So. Let’s start with Trust. A small word with big implications. Everything starts with Trust.

Trust is more complicated than most people realize. It means different things to each of us. When you understand those different meanings, you can rapidly increase trust with those you work with.

Whilst it’s complex, trust can be summarized in a very simple model. A model that you can remember and use. Let’s look at each component now.

Some people will only trust you when you prove that you are Reliable, that you do what you say you would do. Some people will only trust you when you Accept them for who they are and don’t judge them and make them wrong. If you accept them, they’ll trust you.


Other people will only trust you when you’re Open with them about who you are and why you do what you do. If they don’t know you very well and do not know your intentions, they won’t trust you.

And still other people will only trust you when they perceive you to be Authentic. When how you feel matches what you think, which matches what you say and what you do. If these things are not aligned, they’ll think you are inauthentic and they won’t trust you. So you can work on all those four elements of trust. You can be more Reliable, more Accepting, more Open, and more Authentic.

Remember they must be able to See you behaving in a more trustworthy way - your behaviours and actions. Your intentions are irrelevant. It’s your behaviours that matter, in order to build trust.

And most importantly…make sure that others see you acting in their best interests. If it’s just all about you…this will destroy trust. They won’t trust you if you’re only concerned about yourself, and not them too.

Now, this model isn’t perfect. There will be overlaps between the elements. And it will sometimes be dependent on the situation of course. But, most of us will have preferences for one or other of those elements. And those preferences are usually determined by how, where, and when we grew up as children. Also the experiences that we had and who we grew up with. PAUSE

Which element of trust is most important for you, when it comes to trusting other people? And why is that element of trust important to you? What was it about how you grew up that has that element of trust be so important for you? Now think about those people that you need to help you achieve your goal. Those you need to work with. What’s most important to them, when it comes to trusting you? If you don’t know, just ask them. Show them this model. They will tell you what you can do so that they trust you more.

Lastly, of each of those four elements of trust above the line in the equation, Openness is the one that works fastest. Simply by being more open with those you need to help you, you’ll increase trust immediately. For them to trust you, they need to KNOW you, who you are, and why you are the way you are. Be vulnerable and open up. So, when you start paying attention to those elements and actively behaving to improve trust, it’s like you’re ploughing the field so it’s ready to plant the seed.

Let’s now look at planting that seed. What we mean by that is you motivating and inspiring others to help you to achieve that goal or performance improvement. People are motivated by three main things; Purpose, Mastery, and Autonomy [From the book “Drive” by Daniel Pink]. We’re looking now at the Purpose part. As human beings we are purpose-driven animals. The stronger our purpose, the greater our drive.

So one of your key skills as a high-performance leader is to plant the seed of purpose everywhere you go.


When you talk to me about the thing you want to achieve, why should I listen? Why should I care? Why should I help you? Why should I take action of any kind? Well, help me know what’s the big result, the big impact. The purpose of it.

Help me know why that matters – what does that make possible? And help me understand my place in that. And how I can help you. So what’s the story that you will tell those people that you need to help you?

This is important. You need a story. Short. Powerful. Memorable. Then you need to start sharing it. And keep sharing it. Planting that purpose everywhere. And encouraging it to grow. And reminding people, because they will forget.

Next to this video you’ll find a simple template for creating your own story about the goal or performance improvement that you want to make. A story that you can use again and again to inspire and motivate the people you need to help you, to take action. OK, so you’ve told me your story, now I’m listening to you. I may start to help you. Now how can you help to keep me motivated? Here’s where we come to another part of what motivates people. The Mastery part. Help me learn and grow and improve myself. What’s the easiest way for you to do that?

Be a coach for me. Or at least do some of things that coaches do. Help me solve problems by asking questions and listening to me. Don’t just tell me what to do. Don’t just tell me what you think. Yes sometimes that’s useful for me. But only when I ask for it. Mainly just help me think through my challenges and problems. Help me come up with my own answers. Coaching seems to have become this complicated art-form.

And it’s not. It’s really just about asking good questions and listening. That’s it. So, just start asking more questions and listening - when you might normally just be stating things. Both in one to one meetings AND also group situations.

In terms of the specific issue that you help me improve with your coaching, it doesn’t really matter, so long as it’s important to me. If it happens to be about helping me to improve my own leadership skills, then that would of course be very high-impact coaching. So the three elements of influencing others to take action… Firstly…Help me Trust you,

Secondly…Tell me why I should care – inspire and motivate me, (often), And Thirdly…help me learn, grow, and become a better person and a better professional at what I do.

Do those three things and I’ll help you achieve your goals and so will all the other people that you need to help you.


Next to this video are some simple activity guides that you can download and use to become an expert at influencing others to take action. So, good luck and I’ll see you in the next session.

NB: There are 5 Activity Guides for this video.

1. How to Facilitate a team Discussion on Trust (See Chapter 1: What is Trust)

2. A template for a paired conversation on Trust - (Complete individually then share and discuss in pairs)

3. What’s important to me (My Values) - (Complete individually then share and discuss in pairs)

4. Two templates for creating compelling Stories

5. A set of questions you can use to Coach others (See Table of Contents to find this)


Trust and Me…

x Think of someone or a few people whom you trust. Why do you trust that person / those people? What do they do?

x Think of someone who you do not trust. Why don’t you trust them? What do they do or not do, such that you don’t trust them?

x Which of the five elements of Trust (Reliability, Acceptance, Openness, Authenticity, Focus on Self) are most important to you when it comes to trusting another person / other people?

x Why is that element so important to you? (E.g. Upbringing, culture, bad experiences, influences, values, etc).

x What could other members of this team do, such that it would be difficult for you to trust them?

x When you do not trust someone (or not very much) how does that show up in your behaviour? What would you do or not do?

x What could be the impact on this team of you not being able to trust other members of it?

x What would be the benefits of this team having a deep level of trust with each other? What would we see? What would we not see?

x What specific things can you do to increase your own trustworthiness?


What’s Important to me…(My Values) My name:

Please write your answers to the following questions. Be as specific as you can, using examples if possible. My most Important Values…

Why is that Value important to me? Where does it come from in my past?

How does that value show up in my life and specifically in my work?

1.

2.

3.


What’s Your Story? (Transformative Version) To achieve what you want, you will need others to help you. They will only “go the extra mile” with you if you are able to “touch, move, and inspire” them with what you say and how you say it. This simple template will help you create a story that will do that. You could use this type of story in many situations: One to one, with a small group, or with a large group. If you feel a little uncomfortable to share such a story then that’s a good sign. The more you practice it, the easier it will become. This is the “transformative” version of your story. If it’s more appropriate you could use the “intellectual / tactical” version in the other template. Or combine the two.

Please write your answers in the spaces provided and then practice telling the story.

1. What experience*, example, situation, or incident could you use that would help others to understand and feel why what we are trying to achieve is meaningful and important?

2. What are the three main parts of the story of that experience? Eg. Before, During, and After. Or this happened, then this, then this. (Use the back of this sheet if you need more space.)

3. What specific part of the story is right on the edge of your comfort zone in terms of your openness and vulnerability in sharing it? (It could bring a tear to your eye as you talk about it).

4. What are the main (1-3) points you are making by sharing this story?

5. How is this story relevant / beneficial to the present situation / challenge / goal?

As you share the story, 80-90% of the time you take is made up of points 2 and 3 above. And the remaining 10-20% of the time is for points 4 and 5.

* Examples: Early challenging experiences in life. Unusual experiences. Overcoming difficulties. Breakdowns and breakthroughs. Aha moments of insight. Experiences from your sports and hobbies.


What’s Your Story? (Intellectual / Tactical Version) To achieve what you want, you will need others to help you. They will only do this if they understand what you are trying to achieve, why that’s so important (the benefits / what’s possible), how you intend to achieve it, and how they can help you.

By completing the following five sentences you will have the basic foundation for the story that you will start to share with the stakeholders that you need to help you. This is the more “intellectual / tactical” version of your story. If it’s more appropriate you could use the “transformative” version in the other template. Or combine the two.

1. The main goal is to achieve [insert big result here].

2. This will mean that we can…[insert three big meaningful benefits here].

3. How we will do this is to…[insert three main pillars of the strategy].

4. The main areas of support required are…[insert the three most important things that will be needed]. And the support we would like from you is…

5. The first thing we will do is…[insert the first big thing that you will focus on].

Example introduction to a conversation with a key stakeholder… “Can I ask your opinion on something that I’ve been thinking about? I’ve decided to focus on making [insert main goal here] happen by [insert date here]. Imagine what it will be like when we’ve achieved that. It would enable…this [insert benefit]….and this [insert benefit]….and this [insert benefit]. What do you think about this? [PAUSE and wait for their response] Of course, I do need some help. I need this [insert help needed], and this [insert help needed], and this [insert help needed]. Would you be interested in helping me with this? You could add a huge amount of value to this.” [PAUSE, wait for their response, and then continue the conversation].


Chapter 11: High-Performance Leader – Risks and Fears

Video Transcript Hello there. In this video we’ll look at the third part of our definition of high-performance leaders…

…Whilst managing their own fears about the risks involved.

Remember - The first two parts of our definition of high-performance leaders are… They deliver significant performance improvement...

…By influencing others to take actions

Now why is this third part of our definition so important? Why is it relevant? Well… Those two things; making big stuff happen and influencing others, contain within them many risks. You may fail. You may be rejected. You may lose your position or job.

You may lose your lifestyle. You may lose the respect of others. You may be successful, and have to deal with all that that entails.

There are lots of possible outcomes that may feel uncomfortable for you and outside your own comfort zone. And that’s why when you’re trying to achieve big things…at times, you will feel some fear, anxiety, and stress. These risks and the accompanying fear prevent most people from leading anything. They’d rather follow. It feels safer.

But to lead. To be a high-performance leader you have to handle those fears. So this video will show you how to manage those fears. Let’s start by understanding a little more about where these fears come from.

And also learn something about how your brain works. What I am about to share with you is a huge generalization. Your brain and mine are far more complicated than how I am about to describe them to you. But, what I’m about to describe is generally accurate – physically and psychologically. And more importantly you’ll see that it makes sense and also that you’ll remember it.


To become a high-performance leader, knowing what I am about to share with you is really important. Please pay attention - OK, so there are three main parts or elements or areas in your brain…

The first part which was also the first to develop when you were a small infant we could call “The Lizard Brain”. This part of your brain controls much of the physical systems that keep you alive. You’re not consciously aware of all these things. They’re just happening in the background. This part of the brain is also the part that helps to protect your physical body. When you’re faced with a physical threat this part of your brain causes your body to Fight, Flight, or Freeze. To face the threat head-on. To get away from it. Or to freeze and hope the threat moves away. Again, you’re not consciously aware of these things happening. They just happen very quickly and protect you. This part of our brain has kept us alive over the millennia. It is why you I are both here. The second part of the brain we could call “The Monkey Brain”. This part of the brain mostly developed after ‘The Lizard Brain” and it’s mainly concerned with our status and position within our group. It’s continuously looking out for threats to our psychological safety. Threats to our position in the group. It’s not like it always wants us to be the leader of the group. Just that we have a position. Because if we have a position, a role, then we’re safe in the group. We won’t be rejected by it. Because to our monkey brain rejection is it’s worst nightmare. It’s the same as death. All those thoughts going through your head like; “I wonder what he thinks about me?”

“I better not speak up now and say what I really think?” “How can I look good here for my boss?” “What will that luxury car, big house, important job title do for my image?”

All monkey brain thoughts. And we all have them. Most of our thoughts during the day we could call monkey brain thoughts. All perfectly normal. It’s just how it is. And they can be useful. They can motivate us to seek success and achieve things.

The downside though, is that most of our problems in life also come from this part of our brain. Because, those thoughts are usually accompanied by feelings of fear, stress, and anxiety. And your fears about failing to deliver and being rejected by your boss, your colleagues and others that know you, come from this part of your brain.

PAUSE For you wanting to become a high-performance leader – you need to become a master of your own monkey brain and…to learn how to help other people master this part of their brains too.


I’ll show you how to do that just now. But firstly, let’s look at the third part of our brains that we could call “The Human Brain”. This part of our brain that mainly developed after the Lizard and the Monkey, is all about logical, rational thinking, and problem solving. It allows you to think about and act in the interest of things beyond just you. When you’re thinking about “What’s best for the business? Or “What’s best for the organization?” – That’s your human brain talking. It want’s to find the best answer to a problem. To be fact-based and data-driven. It can see patterns and connections. It can come up with creative solutions.

Now, like I started by saying, these are huge generalizations. But they’re a simple way for you to think about how your brain works. And most importantly, you’ll remember them and can take leadership behavior based on them.

Now…the two most important things here for you in becoming a high-performance leader. First thing. It’s your monkey brain that’s responsible for any fear and anxiety that you feel about leading. It’s your monkey brain that worries about all the risks involved like failing and being rejected. Logic and rational thoughts have got nothing to do with it. Second thing. You need to recognize when the monkey brain is talking (yours or someone else’s) and then get the human brain talking instead. Now, you’ll never be able to completely silence your monkey brain and you wouldn’t want to. It can be helpful to you. It does try to keep you psychologically safe.

It’s useful to think about the risks involved and to do things to minimize them. And there’s nothing wrong with that natural desire to want to achieve things and be respected by others, if that’s what you want. The key thing is to be able to see it for what it is. Your monkey brain. And to know that you are not just your monkey brain. You’re more than that. And to be a high-performance leader, you need to be able to master this part of your brain and be able to use your human brain too. It’s your human brain and the human brains of those you need to help you, that will deliver significant performance improvements. If we all just acted from our monkey brains, we wouldn’t achieve anything.

So here’s the simple skill for you to learn and use: One…Notice when your monkey brain is talking. Notice if it’s trying to talk you out of leading. To tell you not to take risks. To be careful. To stay in the comfort zone. To not change. And notice if you feel any fear, stress, or anxiety in your body. Then… Two…Press Pause, take a breath, and ask yourself this question: What would my human brain say now? Doing this interrupts the Monkey Brain. It stops it from playing it’s games. And by asking this question you’re forcing your human brain to take over and come up with a better answer. Three…Think, and then choose a human brain response. Probably acting in spite of the monkey brain thoughts and feelings. And probably doing the right thing. Taking action towards your goals. Speaking up. Asking difficult but important questions.


So that’s the simple way that you can master the third part of our definition of a high-performance leader. …Whilst managing their own fears about the risks involved.

Will you always remember to do this? No. Will your monkey brain still affect your thoughts. Yes. But as you pay attention to your thoughts you’ll notice just how many of them are the Monkey Brain talking. And you’ll get better at pressing pause, asking that question and getting your human brain to start thinking. Use this language with those around you. With your colleagues. With those you lead. That way you’ll all notice when the discussions that you’re having are just monkeys playing games with each other, OR if they’re humans trying to find better solutions and answers to problems.

Next to this video you’ll find some simple activities that you can do to master this part of being a high-performance leader. So good luck with mastering your monkey brain and spending more time in your human one. It’s the only way you’ll achieve the goals you seek. NB: The Activity Guides for this video are the same ones as for the next two videos (You will find them in the next two chapters of this guide):

1. What’s Driving Your Behaviour – The Iceberg Model 2. The Core Personal Leadership Skill – The Pause Button


Chapter 12: What’s Driving Your Behaviour – The Iceberg Model

Video Transcript Hello there,

In this video you’ll learn what’s driving your behaviours and how you can change them to get better results. You’ll also learn what’s driving the behaviours of your team-mates and your direct reports. As a manager, this is critical information for you to know. Let’s unpack this one piece at a time…

Starting with your results. The things that you achieve. The things that you make happen. Now…What leads to those results? What makes them occur?

Your behaviours. Your actions and reactions. Your decisions. Your habits. How you spend your time. What you say and how you say it. All those things lead directly to your results. Those are the things that others see you doing. They are visible. But what’s driving those things. Those actions and behaviours of yours? Because they don’t just happen by themselves.

Well, when you think about it, what lies underneath your behaviours, are your thoughts and your feelings. The things that are going on in you. You think about something. You feel something. Then you do something.

Sometimes, the thought and feeling happens so fast, you don’t even notice it before you act. In fact this is probably the case for you and I, with over 90% of the actions that we take. Most of the time we’re running on auto-pilot.

Occasionally, you might pause to think and consider your actions, but it’s probably quite rare. And of course, only you know your thoughts and feelings. They’re not visible to others. Using the analogy of ourselves as an Iceberg, we could say they lie beneath the waterline. Let’s now consider where those thoughts and feelings come from. Do they just happen randomly, or is there some sort of order to them?

It’s very likely that there’s patterns or themes to your thoughts and feelings. But where do those themes and patterns originate? Why would you be thinking about some things a lot? And some things not very often?


Well let’s go straight to the bottom of the iceberg. The source of all our behaviours. What do you think lies here at the bottom of the iceberg? Well, we could say that the primary driver of your behaviours are your needs.

Both your physical needs for things like air, water, shelter, food, and sex. And also your psychological or emotional needs. Like your needs to belong to a group of some kind, or for the attention of others, or to be loved, or to freely express yourself.

We’re always seeking to meet our needs. Some needs are more important than others for each of us, and the priorities may well change over time. When you look at yourself in this way, you’ll notice that most if not all of your behaviours are driven by satisfying one or other of these needs. We’re always trying to get our needs met by doing things or not doing things. If you need food, you’ll go looking for food.

If you need to feel like you belong, you will go looking for a group of some kind to be a part of. If you need money, you’ll go looking for ways to make money.

If you need recognition and acknowledgement, you’ll find ways to achieve things that others are likely to recognize you for. If you need to be in control of things, then you will do things to help you feel in control.

Some of your needs are getting met regularly by the things that you do. And you probably don’t think about them very often. But, some of your needs are not getting met, or not getting met to the degree that you would like. Now for those “unmet needs”, you’re either not doing anything to try and meet them, OR you are doing things to try and meet them, but whatever you’re doing isn’t working. The thoughts you have about your unmet needs may also be joined by feelings of stress, worry, and anxiety. The feelings associated with the emotion of fear. Between our needs, and our thoughts and feelings is a rather complicated mix of influences and filters.

These influences and filters will determine your thoughts and feelings, and ultimately your behaviours. They are things like your values, beliefs, preferences, assumptions, mindsets, priorities, identity, early experiences, cultural norms, hopes, fears, and so on. All these things will influence what needs are most important to you. They will also influence whether it’s acceptable or not to even think about certain needs. And they will all shape how you think, feel, and behave to try and meet a certain need. And here’s the real kicker. More than likely, you’re not even aware of all these influences and filters. Becoming a high-performance leader is about becoming more and more aware of what’s going on under the waterline of your iceberg. Because just like an iceberg,


where you only see a small part above the water, most of what’s causing your results, is beneath the waterline. Invisible to others but present in you.

When you hear the phrase self-awareness, it’s referring to your awareness of what’s going on beneath your own waterline. The better you know the things that are driving your behaviour, the better able you are to understand what’s driving the behaviour of your colleagues and direct reports too. As a leader this is powerful information. This model will help you and them get to the root causes of dysfunctional behavior faster. And it will help you and your team to consciously design the behaviours, thoughts, feelings, mindsets and beliefs, that will produce the results you want to achieve.

If you wanted to use just one simple model to improve your performance and that of your team, this is it. Easy to remember and easy to use in many situations. Next to this video you can download a worksheet that gives you some simple exercises that you can do by yourself, or with your colleagues, or direct reports. I facilitate these exact same exercises with all the management teams I work with. They find them to be transformational in terms of improving their performance.

Thank you for watching. Please download the worksheet now.


Activity Facilitator Guide: The Iceberg Model

Objective: To give the members of the team a simple framework that they can start to use to understand why they and others behave the way they do. And in the process of learning the framework, discover some insightful things about themselves, and if they choose to, share those things with each other. This framework is really the start of each team member’s journey of personal development, as part of becoming a high-performance team.

What success look likes for this session: - Everyone has at least a basic understanding of the framework.

- They can use the framework to work out why they behave (especially why they react) in the ways that they do.

- Team members being very open with each other and sharing information about themselves that was previously unknown by the others.

- Team members raising contentious issues.

- Fun and laughter. Maybe a few tears.


General Points: The Iceberg is a very simple and useful model to introduce to the team. During this first session you can take the discussion to whatever level feels appropriate. You may choose to keep it at a rather superficial layer, and just talk about the model. Or you may choose to use the hand-outs and ask everyone to use them to reflect on their own behaviours. Or you can do that, and then ask each person to share what they’ve learned about themselves through doing completing the hand-out (this is the ideal). However deep you choose to go with the session, keep referring to “The Iceberg” in your team discussions to help explain behavior. To familiarize yourself with the Iceberg model, before you run this session, it’s recommended that you watch the video. You can also show it to your team as part of this session. You can run this session with all of your team members together. Ideal room set-up would be a half circle of chairs (no tables in front of the chairs). You sitting on a chair in front of the group. You will need at least one flip chart and pens.


The following worksheets give you two ready-made exercises to include in your session. When you use them, they will generate high quality discussions. Please make a copy of for each team member. There are two worksheets. One for “Unwanted behaviours” – Worksheet B, which you might want to do in the first session, and one for “High-Performance Behaviours” – Worksheet A, which you could use in a second session. Or you could do them one after the other in the same session.

You will find these worksheets next to this activity guide in the resources section for the Forming Stage.

Specific Process to use with the Team:

8. Explain the objective of doing the session (As above).

9. Share a short personal story about what you learned about yourself from doing this exercise – some general learnings that you had.

10. Introduce the idea of using the image of an Iceberg to help us understand why we behave in the way that we do. Main point being we only see what is above the waterline, but much of what drives our behaviour is below the waterline and cannot be directly seen.

11. Then draw a simple outline of an iceberg on the flipchart and draw a straight horizontal line through it about one third from the top. This line represents the waterline.

12. Then ask the team the following questions:

a. What is it we notice about each other? (Answers: What we look like. Our Behaviours. Actions. What we say. How we say it. Etc.). Now write “Behaviours” in the Iceberg, above the waterline.

b. Now if those are the things we notice about each other, what lies beneath those behaviours. What are the things that lead us to behave in those ways? (Answers: Upbringing, Experiences, Values, Thoughts, Feelings, Needs, etc) Write down all the things that people say in the Iceberg, below the waterline.

13. Now explain that, whilst what’s going on beneath the waterline is quite messy and complex, we can simplify it somewhat. Now reveal the next flip-chart that you have pre-drawn using the same iceberg picture that is on the handouts that you have downloaded from the link above.

14. Explain the simplified version of the iceberg by sharing a personal example of yours. E.g. where you noticed that you getting a result that you didn’t want, or were not getting a result you wanted. Then work your way down the iceberg, using your own story, talking about your behaviours, thoughts and feelings, influences and filters, then needs and fears.


15. Then give out the worksheets that you printed off (Select which one you will use first). One to each person. And ask that everyone sits quietly for ten minutes as each of us reflects on the questions on the handout and makes a few notes next to the questions.

(There are two worksheets. One for “Unwanted behaviours”, which you might want to do in the first session, and one for “High-Performance Behaviours”, which you could use in a second session. Or you could do them one after the other in the same session.)

16. Try to maintain quiet until everyone has finished. Some people may try and avoid doing the exercise by starting to talk. Just ask them nicely to stay quiet so others can think.

17. When everyone has finished. Ask them to have a conversation with the person sitting next to them about what they’ve written down in answer to the questions on the worksheet. (Leave them to talk for up to ten minutes)

18. Then ask an open question like “OK, so what did you learn about yourself there?” and “Who would like to share their iceberg with us?” (Just wait until someone says “OK, I’ll do it”. You may have to wait a little while.)

19. Then say “Thank You” and ask “Who else would like to share their iceberg?” Ideally, everyone gets to talk about their iceberg and what they learned about themselves.

20. Then debrief the session by saying something like: “Thanks Guys. I really appreciate everyone’s openness. I know it’s not easy sometimes, to share personal stories. So thank you...(Pause)… How did you find that session? What did we get from it? How have we benefitted as a team by doing this? How could we use the Iceberg model as we move forward?”

21. And mention that this was just the start for each of us in learning more about ourselves and why we do the things that we do. We will continue to refer to the Iceberg, both as a model for us as individuals and also for us collectively as a team.

Please Note:

An additional way to use the iceberg model is to use it on the team level. I.e. About the collective behaviours of the team. As you will notice on the Hand-outs, they are worded so that you can use them at the collective team level too. You may well want to run this session again when you notice you are in the Storming Stage and there are unwanted behaviours happening.

Conclusion:

The Iceberg model is a very simple and powerful way to understand why we behave in the ways that we do. The session as explained above may look like it’s complicated, but really it is quite simple.


You as the Team Leader get to know the model if you don’t already. Then you introduce it, and take the team members through the process of completing the worksheets and then talking about them. And it’s a good idea to keep using those worksheets as your team develops to explore other unwanted and desired behaviours.


Chapter 13: The Core Personal Leadership Skill – The Pause Button

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you will learn a simple and critical personal leadership skill. It is a skill that when you start applying it in your life you will see immediate benefits. Here are some of the benefits of using this simple technique that I am about to share with you:

x You will stop yourself from over-reacting in situations and causing problems

with other people

x Your thinking will be of a higher more useful quality

x You will be better able to say what you are thinking and how you are feeling

x You will make better choices and decisions

x You will feel less stressed and more in control

x Other people will respect you more

x You will have higher quality team discussions

Let’s start with a question… What do you do when someone pushes your buttons in some way?

Someone says something or does something that really winds you up. You may feel angry, hurt, fearful, frustrated, jealous, or any combination of those emotions. I know what I do. I usually don’t say anything and then I tend to avoid the person. If I am really angry about them or the situation, I may even give them the passive aggressive approach – and pretend to be OK, but actually resist them or the situation in some way. We could call this the Flight reaction.

Other people I know, go the other way. When their buttons get pushed they get aggressive, sometimes shout, sometimes get threatening. We could call this the Fight reaction.

What do you do when someone or some-thing pushes your buttons? You might find it interesting and valuable to notice what you usually do. So why would we be looking at our reactions in this way?

Well, let me explain… Think about your business or organization. Now imagine all the fight or flight type behaviours that are taking place every single day - in all those meetings and


interactions between colleagues, other teams or other business units. Even with your clients and customers. What do you think is the impact and cost of all that dysfunctional fight or flight type behaviour?

x People not talking to each other unless they have to

x People saying yes, when really they mean no

x People feeling stressed, unhappy, and unsupported

x People not sharing information and good ideas with each other

x People not knowing what is most important

x People not collectively working together to solve the most important issues and problems

x Good people leaving

x Time and energy wasted on things that are not adding value for customers

I could go on, but I’m sure you get the point. The cost is huge. Please understand, these fight and flight reactions are perfectly normal. Over 100s of 1000s of years we have perfected these behaviours in order to protect ourselves from physical threats. The problem is that these behaviours are not protecting us from physical threats any more, they are just getting in the way. Let’s look a bit closer at each of those two types of reactions and see if you can identify with one of them. Let’s start with the Fight type reaction. If you react in a Fight type way when someone or something pushes your buttons:

x You may feel a combination of anger, fear, and perhaps even excitement.

x You may raise your voice and sometimes even shout at other people.

x You cannot seem to stop yourself from saying something to force your point of view, or even make the other person feel bad.

x You may feel very strongly that you are right about something.

x You may seem to get away with this aggressive behaviour towards others.

x Even when your buttons are not being pushed you may tend to speak a lot to try and dominate a conversation.

x Usually you don’t even notice that you are doing this.

x And you may not have even considered the impact you have on others.

Whereas, if you react in a Flight type way when someone or something pushes your buttons:


x At that moment, you will feel intensely uncomfortable. A combination of at least fear and anger.

x You may find it very difficult to think straight.

x You will try to avoid the confrontation or challenge.

x You may be worried about the consequences of this emotionally charged situation

x You may worry that you will not be able to control your own emotions

x You may remove yourself from the situation, either by going into you’re your thoughts, or actually walking away.

x You may find yourself saying Yes to requests of you when you really mean No.

x You may even find yourself trying a variety of tactics to avoid actually confronting the other person.

So if we know that we sometimes react in either a fight or flight type way when our buttons are pushed, the obvious question now is…What can you or I do about it?

How can we improve the way we respond in these situations? Well, there is a very simple technique that you can use for yourself and with your colleagues, when buttons are getting pushed, emotions are running high, reactive behaviour is happening (or it’s about to happen), clear thinking is absent, and bad results are likely. Here is a breakdown of how this technique works. There are seven steps.

Step One: Notice your emotions and physical reactions in your body in the moment when you are triggered and your buttons are getting pushed – These could be any combination of anger, fear, frustration, hurt, guilt, jealousy, sadness, regret, or resentment. Notice how they feel in your body. Notice your increased heart rate and breathing rate. Notice if you are clenching your jaw or tensing your body. These physical reactions are telling you to take the next step.

Step Two: Press Pause – Just say the word “Pause” in your own mind, or if you are in a meeting situation that is getting destructive, you could say “Why don’t we press Pause here for a moment?”

Step Three: Breathe – Take at least three slow deep breaths. This starts to dissipate the adrenaline and cortisol that is rushing around your body. Then… Step Four: Ask yourself a Question – in your own mind, or say it out loud during the meeting. Good questions that you can ask are: What is my part in this? What can I learn here? Why have I created this? Or…What is the real problem here? Or…What is the most important thing we want to achieve here? Then…

Step Five: Think about your answers to that question or questions, and only then choose what you will say or what you will do. Then…


Step Six: Respond – Say what you want to say or take the action that you choose, with a positive intention. This will always lead to a better outcome than if you had just reacted without thinking.

Then sometime later…Take Step Seven: To Notice the bigger patterns…for yourself or the team in similar situations. The patterns and common triggers that seem to press your buttons and cause an emotional reaction. You will then notice those patterns of situations and triggers as they start to happen again, and can choose your behaviour before you start reacting. So those seven steps again:

Step One: Notice your emotional and physical reactions in the moment

Step Two: Press Pause

Step Three: Breathe

Step Four: Ask a Question

Step Five: Think about your answers to that question and choose your response

Step Six: Respond by saying what you need to say or do what you want to do.

Then afterwards, Step Seven: Notice any Patterns in your reactivity and learn from

them.

To summarise then: All of us tend to react in either a fight or flight type way when our buttons get pushed. Even if we would rather not accept this to be true.

The cost of all that fight or flight type behavior, in our relationships and as a whole for our businesses and organisations is huge. There is a very simple seven-step technique that we can use to reduce these behaviours and improve the results we get. Just imagine how much more productive and effective you could be at work if you took control of your reactive behaviours. The results that you could achieve and the influence that you could have. I strongly encourage you to remember to Pause when you notice your buttons being pushed, breath, ask a question, think, and choose a better response than your normal reaction.

Thank you.


Activity Facilitator Guide: The Pause Button

Objective: The team members…

1. Realize that their reactive behaviours reduce performance and that they have at least some responsibility for every upset in their lives.

2. That when they react, it would be better to press the pause button, ask themselves a question, think, and then respond in a better way.

3. Remind each other to press the Pause Button when they notice reactive behaviours in others.


General Points: This session should take about 60 – 90 minutes. Please don’t try to rush it in 30 minutes! It’s an important skill for the team members to learn. As the facilitator of this session, please ensure that you understand the five steps that everyone is to learn (see below). You may also want to watch the accompanying video in the resources section for the Storming Stage before you facilitate the session, so you are more familiar with the material (The video presents a few more steps, but it’s the same process). You could even use this video when you run the session with the team. But you don’t have to! The words and phrase “Pressing the Pause Button” will ideally become part of the language that the team uses. There are Seven Steps for everyone on the team to understand / know / learn (Write these five steps on a flip-chart before the session starts, but keep it covered until you get to the right point in the session):

Pressing the Pause Button

1. Notice your reactive Feelings and Behaviours 2. Press your Pause Button 3. Take a few deep breaths 4. Ask yourself a Question (and take Responsibility) 5. Think 6. Choose a better Response and take that Action 7. Noticing any Patterns and learning from them


If you do nothing else, the most basic level of running this session would be to show the team members these five steps and then have an open discussion about them. But ideally, you will include some sort of process as follows. Don’t worry about doing it perfectly! The important thing is you introduce the language of “Pressing the Pause Button”.

Specific Process Instructions:

1. Talk about the objectives of the session (as above)

2. Share a brief personal story of a recent upset that you have had (that you reacted in a non-useful way), what happened, how you felt at that moment, and how you behaved in that moment. (The idea here is that you “own-up” to over-reacting in a negative way.)

3. Ask the team members to each remember a time when their buttons got pushed and they over-reacted. What happened and How they Felt and How they behaved – in that exact moment (not later).

4. Then ask them to turn to the person next to them and share that story with them. (Leave them talking for 5 – 10 minutes).

5. Then ask “Who wants to share their story with us? And try and have everyone share their story.

6. Then talk about the cost of all of those behaviours on the performance of the team / organisation and how it would be a good idea to reduce such reactive behaviours and choose better ways to respond when our buttons get pushed.

7. Talk about how all those reactive behaviours are based on the themes of Fight, Flight, and Freeze. Reactions that have kept our physical bodies alive throughout our evolution. When we feel any sort of fear, we are programmed to react in a Fight, Flight, or Freeze type of way.

8. Ask the question: “OK, so how do you think you normally react when your buttons get pushed? Do you normally Fight in some way, Flight in some way, or just Freeze?” Then have a short discussion about what everyone says they normally do.

9. Then introduce the simple Seven-Step method of handling our reactive behaviours (Use the pre-drawn chart you have made)

Pressing the Pause Button

1. Notice your reactive Feelings and Behaviours 2. Press your Pause Button 3. Take a few deep breaths 4. Ask yourself a Question (and take Responsibility) 5. Think


6. Choose a better Response and take that Action 7. Noticing any Patterns and learning from them

Discuss each step of this method. And particularly focus on the asking a Question step. For this step, the following three questions are suggested (You may want to write these questions on a flip-chart before the session starts, but keep it covered until the right point in the session):

Good Questions to Ask Yourself x What is my part in this? x What can I learn here? x What’s a better way to respond?

10. Then ask the team members to reflect back on their own story that they started

talking about where they over-reacted, and ask them to use the five steps on that situation now.

I.e. “So think back to the upsetting situation that you were talking about before. Press the pause button on that situation now, and ask yourself those three questions about it. Think about your answers. And now turn back to your partner and share your answers to those questions”. (Leave them talking for another 5-10 minutes).

11. Then ask something like the following: “OK, so what did we learn from asking those questions? What could we have done differently? What was our part in those upsets?” The main thing here is for the team members to start taking responsibility for their own reactive behaviours. If any of them are not able/wanting to “see their part in the upset”, and are still blaming the other person, then point that out and talk about that too.

12. Start to wrap the session up by asking: “So, what did we learn from that session? How did you find that session? How are we going to use this five step method going forward?” And have a general discussion about it. And thank everyone for their time and participation.

13. Take the two flip-charts that you have created (Seven-Step Process and the Three Questions) and stick them up in a prominent place where the team members will see them. In your meeting room if you have one.

Keep using the words “Pressing the Pause Button” and from time to time, share your own examples of where your buttons were pushed, and how you were able to press the pause button, or you were not able to. This will make it real with the team and encourage them to use the method.

Conclusion:


Reactive behaviours are value-destroying. Of course, they will still happen from time to time. But if there’s too much of it happening, you will never become a high-performance team. Beneath every reactive behavior is a fear (though people might call it a concern instead). When team members can use the questions to start to understand why they’ve over-reacted and can see that they had a part in it, there will be less wasted energy and bad feelings in the team. People will start to respond in more productive ways. And you will move towards becoming a high-performance team. Good Luck!


Chapter 14: The GROW Coaching Model

Video Transcript Hello there.

In this video we will look at the GROW coaching model. You will learn or be reminded of each of the stages of a good coaching conversation and I will give you some example questions that you can use for each stage. This video is only an overview of the GROW model and does not include all the other elements of coaching. Those are covered in other videos. If you are planning to do some coaching, then this will be a perfect reminder for you of the basics. The GROW model provides a simple structure for your coaching conversations and can be used in sessions that last anywhere between five minutes and several hours. In the model there are four stages. The G stands for Goal, the R is for Reality, the O stands for Options and the W is for What is to be done, by When, by Whom, and the Will to do it? Of course you will probably move back and forth between stages, but the main thing is that you consider each of these stages when you are coaching.

So let’s work through these stages one at a time. Starting with G for Goals. Clearly goals are important. Without a goal of some kind we have no idea what we are aiming for or what direction to go in. And as you start any coaching conversation with a coachee there are two levels of goals to consider:

Firstly, the Goal for the session. This could be an action plan or simply more awareness or ideas around something that is important for the coachee. Secondly, the Goal for the specific issue to be discussed, that is important to them.

Now, in this regard, there are different types of goals, so let’s talk about these one by one. The first type of goal is the Dream – this is the desired long-term ideal. For example, a dream might be wanting to be healthy, successful, and to make a difference in the world. It is quite broad and general. But it’s also somehow always there in the background and will subtly influence our lives and the choices we make. The second type of goal is the End Goal – this is a significant objective that your coachee wants to achieve. For example, running their own business or maybe selling it, or becoming a senior manager, or perhaps beyond the work environment, something like winning a sporting event. An End Goal provides the inspiration and motivation to take action. It is a real image in your coachee’s mind of an end state that they can describe in detail. They have some control over it, but not total control. The third type is the Performance Goal – this is what your coachee has much more control over – for example, the number of orders processed, or Total Sales, or Total Net


Profit, or if it’s sports related, perhaps running ten kilometres in fifty five minutes. A performance Goal gives your coachee the specification for their actions. It is a stepping stone towards their end goal.

And when it comes to performance goals for them, you would be wise to ensure that they are SMART as well: SMART as in Specific, Measurable, Agreed, Realistic, and Time phased. If all these factors are considered when designing the goal then your chances of success are increased. So it is useful to help your coachee to speak about all three types of goals, but especially their end goal and performance goals. Some good questions you might ask your coachee in this first stage of the conversation include:

x What would you like to get out of this session?

x What would you like to be different when we finish this session?

x What is your Dream?

x What is your end Goal?

x What are you ultimately seeking to achieve?

x What performance goal would support that end Goal?

x What is something that is in your control and will help you move towards your end goal?

Once the coachee has defined a goal for the coaching session AND a specific performance goal for the issue that is important to them, then you can proceed into the next stage. Don’t worry if the performance goal is not that well defined at this stage. You can always come back to it. Don’t skip over this goal setting stage to get to the current reality too soon. If you do this you may limit the coachee’s thinking to just a quick fix for a current problem without them remembering the bigger picture and what they are trying to achieve. The next stage then is R for Reality

Once you and the coachee have identified the goal for the session and a performance goal, it is time to take a good look at where the coachee is now. Your job in this stage is to ask questions that enable your coachee to become aware of the bare facts or the plain truth of their current situation as they perceive it. So this is about real awareness raising for the coachee. Here are some good questions you can ask them:

x What results are you getting now?

x What is the present level of performance?

x How would you describe the present situation?

x What is happening right now / what is going on at the moment?


x How do you know that this is accurate?

x When you look at the situation what do you see?

x How do you feel about the present situation?

x What is the impact of the results you are getting – for yourself, for others, for the organisation?

x What are you doing about it / what have you tried so far / what is your team doing?

x If nothing changes what will happen?

x What other factors are affecting the current situation?

x What is your part in creating this situation?

You can see that it is more useful if their description is as specific as possible rather than broad and generic.

By the end of the Reality stage, your coachee should be more aware than they previously were about the issue. They have had some new insights. They have realised new things about the current situation that they were not aware of. The result of this insight is an increase in their motivation to do something about it. The next stage in the GROW Model is O for Options The purpose of this stage is for your coachee to generate ideas. To be creative and to consider all possible solutions and options. The aim is not to identify the one right answer, but rather to think freely without judgement. And for your coachee to generate as many options as they possibly can.

During this stage you need to listen carefully to hear if they try to restrict themselves by pre-judging their own ideas. Notice the assumptions made by the coachee about the relative value of the ideas that they come up with. Notice if they think that some ideas seem silly, or too ambitious, or too risky. And remind them that at this stage everything is valid and worthy of consideration.

As a coach you can spot these hidden assumptions and skilfully challenge them by using “What if…” type questions. These will remove their assumptions or limiting beliefs. For example you could ask – “What if that issue or obstacle wasn’t a factor, what could be done then?” And to keep challenging them to think up even more options. Here are some useful questions that you could use in this stage:

x How can this goal be achieved?

x What other ways can this goal be achieved?

x What options exist?

x What alternative options are there to solve this problem?


x What could you do to change the situation?

x What actions could be taken to give you a different result?

x What other ways could the result be achieved?

x How might someone else approach this?

x In a perfect world, how would this be done?

x Who else could assist with this?

If you have ideas of your own, you need to choose carefully when you offer them and before you do…always ask your coachee if they would like to hear them. Once a long list of options has been created, they can start to prioritise them. A simple way that they can do this is to consider the costs and benefits of each option. Or by simply scoring each of the options from 1 to 10 based on how much they like them. As a result of working through some version of this prioritisation, they will choose what they want to do. Then you can move into the last stage of the conversation. This is the W of the GROW model – What will you do, When will you do it, Will you actually do it? And Wrapping up.

This final part of the coaching is about getting very specific about what action your coachee will take. And there are some very direct and effective questions that you can use for this purpose. These simple questions come directly from the man who created the GROW model, Sir John Whitmore. Here they are:

x What are you going to do?

x When are you going to do it?

x Will this action meet your goal?

x What obstacles might you meet along the way / What might get in the way?

x Who needs to know?

x What support do you need?

x How and when are you going to get that support?

x What other considerations do you have?

x Rate on a One-Ten scale the degree of certainty you have that you will carry out the actions agreed?

x What prevents it from being a Ten?

Now just like the other lists of questions, you don’t need to ask every single one like some sort of coaching machine, but rather use your own discernment to ask the questions that you feel are appropriate.


If, as you go through this part of the conversation you sense that your coachee is not committed to taking action, then you need to go back to the Goals and Reality stages again, as a way of reminding them what they said they wanted to achieve and why.

Without your coachee taking action, its’ really just been an interesting conversation and nothing more. Insight is just insight. Without any action being taken nothing different will happen for them. So you do need to check that they are committed to taking at least some actions to enable them to make progress. It’s particularly important that you make some notes at this stage. Before you finish, it is a good idea to wrap up by stating again exactly what your coachee said they would do, when they would do it, and other specifics they have mentioned. Then you can give them the notes you have made. Personally, I always finish off a coaching session by asking if there is anything else that the coachee wants to say that has not been said. Then you can check back with the original goal for the session to see if it’s been achieved.

And then confirm the exact time and date of the next coaching conversation (if there is going to be another one). And that’s it.

That’s the basic structure of the GROW model. Goals, Reality, Options, and What is to be done, by Whom, by When and the Will to do it. A very simple four-stage coaching model that you will be able to use in most of the coaching conversations that you will have. Whether they last five minutes or several hours. Next to this video you can download a list of all those coaching questions I mentioned that you can use in your coaching sessions.

So Good luck with your coaching.


Coaching Questions for the GROW Model

Goals:

x What would you like to get out of this session?

x What would you like to walk away from this conversation with?

x What would you like to be different when we finish this session?

x What is the most important issue you would like to talk about today?

x What is your Dream?

x What is your end Goal?

x What are you ultimately seeking to achieve?

x What performance goal would support that end Goal?

x What is something that is in your control and will help you move towards your end goal?

Reality:

x What results are you getting now?

x What is the present level of performance?

x How would you describe the present situation?

x How else would you describe it?

x What is happening right now / what is going on at the moment?

x How do you know that this is accurate?

x When you look at the situation what do you see?

x How do you feel about the present situation?

x What is the impact of the results you are getting – for yourself, for others, for the organisation?

x What are you doing about it / what have you tried so far / what is your team doing?

x If nothing changes what will happen?

x What other factors are affecting the current situation?

x What is your part in creating this situation?

Options:

x How can this goal be achieved?

x What other ways can this goal be achieved?

x What options exist?

x What alternative options are there to solve this problem?


x What could you do to change the situation?

x What actions could be taken to give you a different result?

x What other ways could the result be achieved?

x In a perfect world, how would this be done?

x Who else could assist with this?

What will you do, When will you do it, Will you actually do it? And Wrapping up.

x What are you going to do?

x When are you going to do it?

x Will this action meet your goal?

x What obstacles might you meet along the way / What might get in the way?

x Who needs to know?


x How and when are you going to get that support?

x What other considerations do you have?

x Rate on a 1-10 scale the degree of certainty you have that you will carry out the actions agreed?

x What prevents it from being a 10?


Chapter 15: How to Run an Action Learning Session

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you will learn how to facilitate an Action Learning session for a group of five or six people. If you want to make rapid and immediate progress on a problem, a challenge, an idea or an opportunity, then this simple process really is a great choice. It is both remarkably simple and incredibly powerful. I have used Action Learning with many groups and business teams and watched them as they made more progress on a problem or issue in thirty minutes than they had previously made in weeks or even months. The essence of Action Learning is asking great questions that lead to new insights about problems or issues, and actions that can be taken. When this is done in a structured way, amazing things can happen. You and I, and the people that we work with are often far smarter than we might give ourselves credit for. Using Action Learning, we can solve most of the problems or issues that we face, rather than immediately seeking help from external sources. So let’s start by talking about what you need to do before the action learning session.

x Choose the people you would like to join the group. Either five or six people is ideal. And they should want to come. Not be forced. Seven people is OK. Four people is just about workable. But eight is too many and three is not enough.

x Choose the problem or issue that you want to work on, or ask each person to think about and bring their own issue to the session.

x Choose the location or room. You just need five chairs in a semi-circle with one chair in front facing the others. No tables. Each person will need some paper and pen to make notes with.

x Next, work out how much time you need. The minimum time you need for one problem of issue is thirty minutes. If I was working with a team on one problem or issue, I would though plan for one hour, to give us enough time for an open discussion after the first 30 minutes of the action learning process. If each person in a group of 6 brings a problem or issue, and each person gets thirty minutes, then you will need three hours, plus fifteen minutes for a break.

x Lastly, you need to let those people know the plan: What they will be doing and Why. What they need to think about (if anything). When and where you will meet, and how long the session will last.

On the day, you need to set the room up before everyone arrives.


Once everyone is there and settled in, how do you set up or frame the action learning session? Well, here is a simple way to do this, based on six people each bringing an issue to the group. If you will just be focusing on one problem for the whole time adjust the language as necessary. And feel free to print out the words I use, and use them in your own way.

“So thank you all for coming today. The purpose of this session is to make progress on some of the most important problems and issues that each of us faces right now. Doing this will move us closer to achieving our goals. I have used Action Learning before and it’s helped me to solve problems much faster than when I have tried to solve them by myself.

We will take a break at 1030, and we will finish at 1230. Some of you know how this works, but some of you don’t, so let me briefly explain the process. It’s really very simple.

1. Each of us will have thirty minutes as the Presenter. When you are the presenter, you will get two minutes to describe your problem, issue or idea to the group. It doesn’t matter if it is still rough and unformed. That’s why you are bringing it to the group.

2. After the presenter has described their issue, each of us in turn asks the person

an enquiry or reflection type question. A question that helps the presenter to deepen their understanding of the issue and generate insight for them about it.

So this is not to be our advice wrapped up as questions, especially if we think we know what the solution or answer is. Action Learning is all about the asking of great questions and then the listening to the answers. It is about the presenter’s insight. Not about how clever we are.

One of us will write down all the questions for the presenter so they can focus on listening and thinking, and so they have a record of them afterwards. You will notice that questions will naturally come into your mind as the process evolves. As you think of these questions, just write them down so you remember them and then you can choose which one you want to ask when it’s your turn. I will give you a list of questions that you can choose from if you need to.

3. As the questions are asked, the Presenter thinks about the question and then

answers it (or not). This is not to become a conversation. The questioner does not get to ask another follow up question or to clarify their question. This way we practice asking good clear questions.

So we will have two or maybe even three rounds of questions.

4. Then we will have another round, but this time each person can offer one piece

of advice or feedback to the Presenter. They don’t need to respond unless they want to, but again this is not to become a conversation.


5. After we have finished the feedback round, the presenter will share what he or

she has learned from the experience and what action/s he or she will take and by when. We will then have a very quick debrief to answer questions that anyone has about the process.

6. We will then repeat the process for each person. Each of us will get exactly 30

minutes as the presenter.

7. Then at the end we will debrief as a group as to what we learned from the session.

8. A few things to remember. Like I said, this is not a conversation. It is about

asking enquiry and reflective type questions and not giving advice wrapped up as questions. I will remind us of these things if we start doing them.

9. So let’s start and we can learn more about how this works as we go.

So that is all you need to say. Then you hand out copies of the list of useful questions to all the participants, ask who wants to go first, that person presents their issue and the whole thing starts moving.

As you are facilitating the session, there are some useful things to remember:

1. As you set up and facilitate the process, it’s important that you hold the belief that the process will generate new insights and thinking on the issue, all by itself. You don’t need to force this to happen.

2. Gently correct people if they ask leading or advice type questions. Ask them to reform the question, think of another one, or just ask a question from the list that you have given them. Those questions on the list (that you can download from the link below) have been tried and tested and they all work very well. In fact in most of the sessions that I run these days with teams, I insist that they only ask questions from the list for the first round of questions. This helps them to realize the power of just using simple, open, enquiry or reflection type questions.

3. Don’t let people ask more than one question at a time, or to get into a

conversation with the presenter. You need to jump on this one quite quickly to stop it just becoming a normal conversation.

4. Allow each person their full time, no more and no less.

5. The idea with Action Learning, as you probably already know is that this same

group then meets up every month for at least six months to review the actions that they have taken, and to run the process again. This helps to increase accountability and the likelihood that people do what they say they will do, because only this will lead to new results.


6. And as the group gets into the habit of Action Learning, they will see the benefits for themselves and will become much better at asking questions and listening. Both of these skills immediately translate into all the other conversations they have with their colleagues and customers.

And that’s all you need to know to start facilitating your own Action Learning sessions.

I strongly encourage you to start using this simple approach to problem solving, and get into the habit of doing it regularly with your work colleagues. You will be amazed at how much progress you can make on an issue in such a short amount of time. Thank you.


Activity Facilitator Guide: Action Learning

Objective:

The team members…

4. Make progress on a problem, issue, or idea

5. Experience a new way of solving problems as a team

6. Become better listeners and question askers

7. Want to use the process again soon (and it becomes a habit)

Background: Action learning is a powerful way to solve problems. You will only yield its full benefits though, if it becomes a habit for the team. Over time, it just becomes THE main way that the team runs meetings. This will look like meetings where there are lots of great questions asked and then listening to the answers. If your team only tries this approach once, and you just go back to meetings where there’s just lots of stating, telling, and advocacy – your team won’t move into the Performing Stage and become a truly High-Performance Team. So please keep applying this Action Learning approach until it becomes a team habit.

The Benefits of Action Learning:

x More problems solved (and solved faster).

x Better (sometimes completely new) solutions to problems.

x Participants learning to ask high quality questions.

x Participants learning to listen more deeply to each other (rather than just

advocating their opinions).

x All team members become aware of each other’s priorities (and may see

immediate ways to help each other).

x Participants learn to ask for and offer support (rather than struggling by

themselves).

x Can be applied in many situations with different groups and teams with

different problems, challenges, and ideas.

Ideal Problems for Action Learning Sessions:

x Not too big and not too small.


x Is important and you or the team own at least part of it.

x You know you need to do something about it quite soon.

x You are open to different perspectives (i.e. have not already made your mind up

about what to do).

x You are happy to report back to the team about what actions you take.

x Can be about anything that the presenter would like assistance with. E.g.

Personnel issues, professional development issues, project problems, innovation

ideas, relationship challenges, etc.

Facilitator Instructions: This facilitator guide may seem long and detailed. But the actual process of Action Learning is actually very simple. It’s just a smart way for your team to solve problems. It’s basically a form of Group Coaching. Its essence is asking good great questions and listening. But please do read this facilitator guide. It shows you exactly how to set your team up for success. Please watch the accompanying video for Action Learning. You will find it in the resources section for the Norming Stage in this course. You could also show the video to your team before running your first session with them.

Two Options for how to run the session:

A) Each individual brings an issue or problem to the Action Learning Session

B) The Team works on a common team issue or problem

Preparation before the action learning session (For Both Options):

x Choose the people you would like to join the group – Might just be your team, or a sub-set of it, or may include other relevant stakeholders. Either five or six people is ideal. And they should want to come. Not be forced. Seven people is OK. Four people is just about workable. But eight is too many and three is not enough.

x Choose the problem or issue that you want to work on, or ask each person to think about and bring their own issue to the session.

x Choose the location or room. You just need five chairs in a semi-circle with one chair in front facing the others. No tables. Each person will need some paper and pen to make notes with.


x Next, work out how much time you need. The minimum time you need for one problem of issue is thirty minutes. If each person in a group of 6 brings a problem or issue, and each person gets thirty minutes, then you will need three hours, plus fifteen minutes for a break.

x Lastly, you need to let those people know the plan: What they will be doing and Why. What they need to think about (if anything). When and where you will meet, and how long the session will last.

x On the day, you need to set the room up before everyone arrives.

Once everyone is there and settled in, you set up and frame the action learning session. Present the purpose of the session and ask everyone to be open-minded about the approach. You could say something like the following (this is written for Option A. For Option B, just adjust your language and instructions as appropriate): “So thank you all for coming today. The purpose of this session is to make progress on some of the most important problems and issues that each of us faces right now. Doing this will move us closer to achieving our goals. We will also be learning a new approach to solving problems. It’s called Action Learning.

[I have used Action Learning before and it’s helped me to solve problems much faster than when I have tried to solve them by myself.] We will take a break at 1030, and we will finish at 1230. Some of you know how this works, but some of you don’t, so let me briefly explain the process. It’s really very simple. Each of us will have thirty minutes as the Presenter. When you are the presenter, you will get two minutes to describe your problem, issue or idea to the group. It doesn’t matter if it is still rough and unformed. That’s why you are bringing it to the group. After the presenter has described their issue, each of us in turn asks the person an enquiry or reflection type question. A question that helps the presenter to deepen their understanding of the issue and generate insight for them about it. So this is not to be our advice wrapped up as questions, especially if we think we know what the solution or answer is. Action Learning is all about the asking of great questions and then the listening to the answers. It is about the presenter’s insight. Not about how clever we are. One of us will write down all the questions for the presenter so they can focus on listening and thinking, and so they have a record of them afterwards.

You will notice that questions will naturally come into your mind as the process evolves. As you think of these questions, just write them down so you remember them and then you can choose which one you want to ask when it’s your turn. I will give you a list of questions that you can choose from if you need to.


As the questions are asked, the Presenter thinks about the question and then answers it (or not). This is not to become a conversation. The questioner does not get to ask another follow up question or to clarify their question. This way we practice asking good clear questions. So we will have two or maybe even three rounds of questions. Then we will have another round, but this time each person can offer one piece of advice or feedback to the Presenter. They don’t need to respond unless they want to, but again this is not to become a conversation. After we have finished the feedback round, the presenter will share what he or she has learned from the experience and what action/s he or she will take and by when. We will then have a very quick debrief to answer questions that anyone has about the process. We will then repeat the process for each person. Each of us will get exactly 30 minutes as the presenter.

Then at the end we will debrief as a group as to what we learned from the session. A few things to remember. Like I said, this is not a conversation. It is about asking enquiry and reflective type questions and not giving advice wrapped up as questions. I will remind us of these things if we start doing them.

So let’s start and we can learn more about how this works as we go.” So that’s all you need to say. Then you hand out copies of the list of useful questions (See the last page of this facilitator Guide) to all the participants, ask who wants to go first, that person presents their issue and the whole thing starts moving.

Process for Option B: For when you want the team to work on just one team problem or issue. Either, one person presents the problem or issue (on behalf of the group), and then the other team members asks questions as per Option A, and the one person replies from their own perspective. Then you have an open group discussion after the three rounds (two of questions and one of advice). Or, one person presents the problem or issue, then one person asks the first question, and then all team members answers that question from their own perspective. Then another person asks the next question, and everyone answers from their own perspective. Etc. It’s a good idea for someone to make some notes on a flip-chart as this process unfolds, otherwise you might forget all the great answers. For either option, ensure the team sticks to this formal and structured process for the first 20 minutes (at least) and does NOT get into a normal conversation. People only get to ask questions and give answers. So no follow up questions or further responses. This is important for you as the facilitator to watch out for.


After the formal and structured process, THEN allow the team to go into more open and flowing group discussion mode if they want to. But do remind them to ask questions and listen if there’s too much telling happening.

Facilitation Tips:

7. As you set up and facilitate the process, it’s important that you hold the belief that the process will generate new insights and thinking on the issue, all by itself. You don’t need to force this to happen.

8. Gently correct people if they ask leading or advice type questions. Ask them to re-form the question, think of another one, or just ask a question from the list that you have given them. Those questions on the list (that you can download from the link below) have been tried and tested and they all work very well. In fact in most of the sessions that I run these days with teams, I insist that they only ask questions from the list for the first round of questions. This helps them to realize the power of just using simple, open, enquiry or reflection type questions.

9. Don’t let people ask more than one question at a time, or to get into a conversation with the presenter. You need to jump on this one quite quickly to stop it just becoming a normal conversation.

10. Allow each person their full time, no more and no less.

11. Finish every session by asking some of the following questions:

x How did you find that Action Learning process?

x How did it feel during the formal structured part?

x What progress did we make on the problem / issue?

x What did you learn about yourself?

x How can we apply this approach more often?

x When will we use the process again?

12. The idea with Action Learning is that individuals take action on what they decided to do, after the session, and then report back to the team on what they did and what results they achieved. This helps to increase accountability and the likelihood that people do what they say they will do, because only this will lead to new results.

13. And as the group gets into the habit of Action Learning, they will see the benefits for themselves and will become much better at asking questions and listening. Both of these skills immediately translate into all the other conversations they have with their colleagues and customers.

And that’s all you need to know to start facilitating your own Action Learning sessions.


Conclusion:

To become a truly high-performance team, your team will need to become better problem solvers and idea generators. Action Learning is a very effective tool to help you.

It’s very simple to use and can be applied in many situations. As the Team Leader, when you understand the basic principles of it, you will be able to build it into many of the meetings that your team has.

As you do this, not only will your team start coming up with better ideas and solutions, but they will also become more effective managers, and other people in the organization will notice how well your team works together.

An Action Learning type team habit is one of the tickets into the Performing Stage.

Good Luck!


Useful Questions for Action Learning: In the following questions, the word problem also translates to challenge, opportunity, or idea. If you are working on a common team problem, then replace “You” with “We or Us”.

x What is the real problem here?

x Why is this a problem? What are the costs/impact of it?

x What are you trying to achieve here / What results are you seeking?

x What does success look like? How would you measure success?

x How important is this problem, compared to other things you need to think about and take action on?

x How do you feel about this?

x When do you need to have solved this problem?

x What are you really worried about here?

x What have you tried before?

x What is your part in this problem (how might you be making it worse)?

x What would you like to do?

x What options do you see?

x What other ways could you look at this problem?

x How could you approach this problem in a different way than you normally would?

x What obstacles stand in your way?

x Who needs to buy into a solution?

x If you put yourself in the other person’s / peoples’ shoes what would they say about this / how would they describe this?

x How does the other person/people feel about this?

x What more/further information do you need to proceed?

x Who can help you with this?


x What actions will you now take on this, and by when?


Chapter 16: How to Run a Group Feedback Session

Video Transcript Hello there. In this video you will learn how to facilitate a group feedback session with your team.

Running a group feedback session with your team is one of the most powerful ways that you can improve performance and build a high-performing team. Yes, you can do anonymous 360 degree type surveys, but they do not compare with the immediate benefits of running a session where each member of the team gives feedback to all the other members, and in turn receives feedback from them too, in a live real-time situation.

And by getting into the habit of doing this three or four times a year at regular intervals. OK, so given that you want to facilitate a group feedback session with your team, let’s now look at how you go about doing that. Firstly, there are some important things to remember: As soon as people know that they about to be a part of a live feedback session in a group, it is typical that they will start to feel somewhat anxious. In our normal working lives these days, we do not often experience situations where we receive feedback directly and all together from those we work with.

That anxiety can appear in many different ways and will relate directly to how each person usually responds to feeling fear. Some people will pretend they are ok with it (when they are not). Others may think of reasons why they cannot be there. Others may even find ingenious reasons why it’s not a good idea and share that with you. So in order to minimise such reactions you need to judge very carefully when you will let the team members know that that is what you will be doing. At least the first time. After people have experienced it once, and seen the benefits, things get easier. Building from that point, you need to think carefully when and where you will run the session. Ideally, at least the first time, you will be away from the normal work environment, and in terms of timing, I would suggest running this session after you have been together discussing other topics for at least half a day. On a two day offsite with a team that I have not worked with before, I usually run this session at the end of the first day, knowing that we will be together for dinner that evening, and all day the next day. And I have also known managers that I have worked with, who have run this session by itself, without other sessions before it and just a simple debrief afterwards. But you need to think very carefully if you were to do it this way, as it can be quite an emotionally deep experience. As a minimum, I would arrange some sort of social function afterwards like going out for drinks and dinner with the team.


After the first time, you can probably run this session by itself with just a simple introduction before you start. You also need to think about who will be part of this feedback group. You want to have no more than ten people in the group. If you have a larger group, then carefully make up two groups of people who know each other best, all together in each group. And if it’s the first time you are doing this, I suggest you don’t run those two groups in parallel because you as the leader need to be a part of each group. In order to maximise the chances of having a productive session, you need to use a very simple and safe format for people to give feedback to each other. Of course there are many ways of doing this, but I am going to share with you the format that I have used with hundreds of teams over the last ten years. It is proven. It works every time. It is simple, and you could use it in a one to one feedback situation as well. You will also be able to remember it easily. Here it is… There are just two simple sentence starters for you to remember.

The first sentence starter for you and the other team members to use is:

What I appreciate about you is…

And then you say what it is you appreciate about the person that you are giving feedback to. This may be in relation to anything that they have done or how they have been. And you should give some examples too.

The second sentence starter for you and the other team members to use is:

And, I feel you could be even more effective if… And then you say what it is you feel they could do to be even more effective going forward. Again be specific and give examples.

Now as you can guess, this second piece of the feedback is where you need to be as clear and specific and direct and honest as you can possibly be. And of course this is where some people may try and avoid being those things. Because they don’t want to offend the other person and / or they are worried about what the other person will think of them. But in my experience if you set it up well, then people will be open and direct and honest and great value will be gained in the process.

These sentence starters have been tried and tested for many many years and have been proven to work very well. Notice the words in them. Appreciate. Even more effective. They are designed to be completely non-judgemental and therefore very unlikely to cause offence. They are neutral. Because they are so simple, you will remember them, and can use them in just about any setting you can think of.

You could add a context to them if you wanted to. For example, you could say…

1. In the last quarter…what I have appreciated about you is…


2. And, in the next quarter, I feel you could be even more effective if… OK, so getting back to your planning for the session. You have thought carefully about the timing of doing this session. You have thought about the venue, you have invited the right number of people and the right people. You have ensured that there will at least some sort of debriefing and socialising type of session afterwards. And I have now given you a simple format to use. You are prepared. And now everybody has arrived and sat down in the circle of chairs that you have prepared. Notice I said a circle of chairs. Don’t do this with any tables between anyone as this is not a normal meeting and tables just get in the way of people being open to give and receive quality feedback. Here are the steps you can take to run the process:

Step One: Explain the purpose of the session and remind everyone about the benefits of feedback. Then explain how the process will work. When you are explaining how the process will work I suggest that somewhere in the room that you are using you have the two simple sentence starters written out so everyone can see them. One sentence starter on each of two flip-charts is ideal, but you could use some sort of marker board, or even a power-point slide if you had too.

Step Two: Give everyone the simple preparation handout, that you can download in advance from the link next to this video and make copies of, ask them to complete the form, by writing the names of everyone in the group, starting with the person to their left, down the left hand column of that handout.

Then in columns two and three, they need to think about each person on their list and make a few notes about the feedback that they would like to give each person. Column two is about what they appreciate about that person and column three is about what they feel that person could do to be even more effective. As you explain this to the group ask them to think of specific examples to illustrate the feedback that they give.

And ask them NOT to write down or give just generic and unspecific feedback like “I feel you could be even more effective if we met up more to get to know each other better.” This type of feedback is not very useful and is usually given because someone finds it hard to give direct feedback about what they really think. This preparation phase should take about 10 minutes and should be done in silence. Don’t let people start talking as this will distract everyone else from thinking carefully about what they want to say. Another thing to remember here. Some people may say that they don’t know another person well enough to give them feedback. They will try to use this excuse to not give feedback, so you can pre-empt this by saying the following: “Even if you feel that you don’t know someone that well, you can still give them feedback. Even if it is just your first impressions about the other person. There is always something we can say to offer feedback. Remember, part of this is about us getting skilled at observing our team mates and offering feedback.” Saying something like that usually helps to get around these type of comments. This type of resistance will lessen considerably when the team gets into the habit of doing this process every three or four months.


Step Three: Once everyone has completed their preparation handout, then you are ready to start. So ask who wants to receive their feedback first and then get started. The person immediately to their left is the person to start giving feedback first and then work around the circle in a clockwise direction. I suggest that you do all of the appreciative feedback first. I.e. everyone gives their appreciative feedback, and then you go around the circle again with everybody giving their “more effective” type feedback. Doing it this way means the person receiving their feedback can maintain one emotional state for each round of feedback. As the feedback is being given I suggest that the person sitting to the receiver’s right is the person to make notes for the receiver. I.e. they write down the main points that each person says to the receiver. This means that the person receiving the feedback can focus on listening only and that they will have a record of the feedback later. After each person has given their feedback to the receiver, the receiver just says thank you. There is no clarification or questioning or dialogue at this point at all. You must be quiet strict about this, otherwise the process could degenerate into a dialogue and people can get defensive. If people try to clarify things, just remind them that they can get as much clarification as they need after the session has finished, on a one to one basis. When the first person has received both rounds of feedback. Then the process moves to the person immediately to their left and you start it again, with the person to their left giving them their appreciative feedback first and so on. The person who has just previously received their feedback then becomes the note-taker for that person who is now receiving their feedback. This last point is important. Because that person who has just received feedback is very likely to be in quite a deep and reflective mental and emotional state, I have found it useful for them to do something quite intellectual and task focused so that they are immediately pulled out of that state and can be present for the next person to receive their feedback. If this doesn’t happen, they may remain inwardly focused for quite some time and unable to be of best service to the people who remain to receive feedback.

And so you continue the process, moving from one person to the next until each person has received their feedback from everyone else in the circle. And then the process is finished and you can ask how everyone felt during the session and what value they got from it. So to summarise then… Getting your team into the habit of giving and receiving feedback is an essential part of becoming a high-performing team. Running a group feedback session, in the way that I have described, three or four times a year, will speed up learning, increase trust, and improve performance.

Remember to set your group feedback session up for success. The right people, in the right place, at the best time possible, using the simple format that I have shown you. Facilitate the session in a simple, positive, and quite controlled way. This will have people feel safe and comfortable with it. And debrief the process afterwards, to learn how people felt about it.


And that’s all you need to know…


Activity Facilitator Guide: Group Feedback

Objective:

- To better understand how our colleagues see us

- To further embed the habit of giving and receiving feedback

- To learn ways that we can improve our performance

- To feel appreciated by our colleagues for what we do

- To prove that we trust each other enough to give feedback in a group


General Points: When your team does this process to a high standard on a frequent basis they will likely be moving into the Performing Stage. This process builds on the Laser Feedback session that you learned about and hopefully practiced in the Storming Stage. If you have not yet done that session you may want to do it before this Group version. In fact, the only difference from the Laser Feedback session is that the team sits in a circle all together and takes it in turn to receive feedback from all the other members of the team (rather than more private one to one conversations in the Laser Feedback version). This session can be more powerful than the Laser Feedback version as everyone gets to hear everybody else’s feedback. If individuals hear the same or similar feedback from several or all of their colleagues in this way (and everybody hears that happening too) then there’s a much greater chance that they will take action on it. It’s much harder for them to just ignore it (like they could do if they heard it during the Laser Feedback session). Furthermore, this process encourages people to publicly say what they may only have said to themselves, or only said in private. It tends to encourage disclosure and transparency - which helps in becoming a high-performance team. For a team of 7 to 10 people, the session will take 60 - 90 minutes. Don’t attempt this session with more than 10 people, as it will take too long. Rather think about how to divide the group into two sub-groups and have two feedback circles running in parallel. But if you do this, ensure there’s enough physical space separating them to allow privacy. This is a very powerful process. It has been used very successfully 1000s of times. It’s simple once you understand how it works. But you do need to read through these instructions and ensure you have a good idea of the process.


Please watch the accompanying video for Facilitating a Group Feedback session in the resources section for the Norming Stage of this course. You may also want to the show the video to your team before you run your first session. You may choose to run this session by itself, or use it as part of a workshop with other sessions. If you do the latter, position this session about half-way through the day. Please don’t shy away from doing this session with your team. It may be a little uncomfortable the first time, but after that it will get better and better. Once you set up and introduce the session and explain how it will work, get the team members into making their notes on the handout quite quickly. The more time you take up front, the more resistance there may be to doing the exercise. So frame it up, explain the benefits of feedback, and get them into the handout. If you previously have done the Laser Feedback session, then it would be good to refer back to that so that it gives the team members a reference point to work from. In the highly unlikely event that certain team members simply refuse to participate, have an open conversation about why they feel that way and what their concerns are. If your team cannot give each other simple feedback in this very safe format, then they will never become a high-performance team. So you need to understand why they might not want to do it. The most likely reasons for someone refusing, are that they are worried about their colleagues highlighting the things (that they already know) that they need to change, or they don’t want to tell certain people what they think/feel about them to their face (but might rather be doing it behind their back). But so long as you hold the intention that the session will go well and are confident as you set it up, it will be a great session.

Preparation: Write up two flipcharts with the Feedback Sentence Starters on them (See below for exact wording to use). Ideally the room set-up should just have a half-circle of chairs, with one chair out front for you (for the preparation part), and the two flipcharts. And photocopy enough Feedback Preparation Worksheets for one for each team member (At end of this document).

Specific process instructions:

19. Introduce the session by talking about the objectives (as above).

20. Then ask questions like: “What are some of the reasons that we sometimes don’t want to give feedback to each other? What can get in the way?” And discuss the answers that are given. The main reasons are: Not wanting to hurt


the other’s feelings. Not wanting to make things worse. Feel uncomfortable doing it, etc.

21. Then talk about how giving and receiving feedback is one of the main ways that ordinary teams become high-performance teams. And link back to the Laser Feedback session if you have already done it.

22. Then say: “And so to make giving and receiving feedback as simple and safe as we can, we are going to use a simple consistent format for giving feedback to each other”. Reveal the two pre-drawn flip-charts with the feedback sentence starters on them as follows:

“What I appreciate about you is…” (Chart on the left). “And how I feel you could be even more effective is…” (Chart on the right). Explain that these words have been specifically chosen to give the best results and to make it as simple and safe as possible.

23. Hand out the preparation templates and explain “Write all your colleagues names down the left column of the page, then in the second column right down the things that you appreciate about each person on the list, and in the third column right down a few things that you know would make each person even more effective. Try and be as specific as you can with the points you write down. And please don’t just write things down like “I feel you would be even more effective if we got to know each other better. This is not feedback.”

“Even if you don’t know someone that well, there is always some useful feedback that you can offer them. Please don’t use this as an excuse. OK, let’s sit quietly and complete this handout”

24. Then just leave everyone to sit quietly for probably about 15 minutes to write down their feedback for each person on the handout. If people start to talk, ask them politely to please remain quiet so that everyone can concentrate.

If you are the team leader then you will of course be taking part in the feedback, so you will have to complete the template as well (you could have already done this before the session if you wanted to).

25. Once everyone has completed their preparation handout, then you are ready to start. If not already in the correct set-up, move the chairs so that they are all in a circle (including yours).

Then ask “Who wants to receive their feedback first?” and then get started. If you are the team leader, I suggest that you don’t go first to receive feedback. It’s important that the team has become comfortable with the process before they give you feedback (as giving feedback to you as the team leader may be more difficult for them). So choose someone else to go first to receive their feedback. The person immediately to their left is the person to start giving feedback first and then work around the circle in a clockwise direction. I suggest that you do all of the appreciative feedback first. I.e. everyone gives their appreciative


feedback to that same person, and then you go around the circle again with everybody giving their “more effective” type feedback to that same person. Then you move on to the next person, for them to receive both rounds of feedback.

Doing it this way means the person receiving their feedback can maintain one emotional state for each round of feedback. As the feedback is being given I suggest that the person sitting to the receiver’s right is the person to make notes for the receiver. I.e. they write down the main points that each person says to the receiver. This means that the person receiving the feedback can focus on listening only and that they will have a record of the feedback later. After each person has given their feedback to the receiver, the receiver just says thank you. There is no clarification or questioning or dialogue at this point at all. You must be quite strict about this, otherwise the process could degenerate into a dialogue and people can get defensive. If people try to clarify things, just remind them that they can get as much clarification as they need after the session has finished, on a one to one basis. When the first person has received both rounds of feedback. Then the process moves to the person immediately to their left and you start it again, with the person to their left giving them their appreciative feedback first and so on. The person who has just previously received their feedback then becomes the note-taker for that person who is now receiving their feedback. This last point is important. Because that person who has just received feedback is very likely to be in quite a deep and reflective mental and emotional state, I have found it useful for them to do something quite intellectual and task focused so that they are immediately pulled out of that state and can be present for the next person to receive their feedback. If this doesn’t happen, they may remain inwardly focused for quite some time and unable to be of best service to the people who remain to receive feedback. And so you continue the process, moving from one person to the next until each person has received their feedback from everyone else in the circle.

And then the process is finished and you can ask how everyone felt during the session and what value they got from it.

26. Then debrief the process by asking the following questions:

a. How did you find that experience?

b. What did you learn from doing it?

c. Which type of feedback was easiest/hardest to give? And to receive?

27. Then say something like: “OK, so thank you all for really getting stuck into that exercise. I know it felt a bit uncomfortable to start with, but you all did brilliantly. We will get into the habit of doing this regularly, but in the mean time, let’s not wait for sessions like this. Let’s offer each other feedback much more often. When we see each other doing something great, lets acknowledge each other. And if we see our colleagues doing something that


is not helpful, or could be done in a different/better way, then also offer your feedback then too. That’s just what high-performance teams do. Once again, thanks so much for your participation here”.

28. And repeat this session about every three months. You could adjust the sentence starters to something like:

“In the last three months, what I have appreciated about you has been…”

And “In the next three months, how I feel you could be even more effective is…” As the team gets more used to doing it, the quality of the feedback that they give each other will get better and better.

Conclusion:

Giving and receiving feedback is a habit for a high-performance team. Quality timely feedback makes the learning and improvement cycle spin faster.

You will know when your team is ready to move into the Performing Stage when they can do this Group Feedback session regularly to a high-standard of giving quality specific feedback to each other. And, you can see that individuals are acting on the feedback that they receive.

Good luck and enjoy the session.


Group Feedback - Preparation

MY NAME: DATE: Team Member Name:

Appreciate: Even More Effective…


Chapter 17: How to Run Highly Effective Meetings

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you will learn how to significantly improve the outputs and results that you achieve in your meetings. You will be able to have far more productive, interesting, and useful meetings, and be able to appropriately intervene in other people’s meetings to make them more productive too. Over the years, and as the result of attending thousands of meetings, I have developed a set of common principles that when followed will help you to immediately improve the meetings you have. In this video I will share these principles with you. If you are the leader, moderator or facilitator of a meeting, then you are in control of nearly all of the following principles. If you are a participant in someone else’s meeting then you can influence how these principles are applied in those meetings. This includes both what you can influence before the meeting happens, and actually during the meeting too. So let’s look at each of those principles in more detail. The first principle is about the topics and issues that you actually discuss during the meeting. Ensure that all of the topics and issues that you discuss at each meeting are of the same size and level of importance. Be careful not to mix up the day-to-day issues, with the operational or tactical issues, and with the bigger strategic topics. Check in advance that this is not the case with meetings that you are invited to. And if it is, then speak to the moderator/facilitator about fixing it.

If the meeting is a mix of different size topics, people will get frustrated, you won’t have enough time for the big topics, progress and decisions will not get made, and you will keep revisiting the same topics every meeting. And people who have issues and problems that need solving immediately, they will get frustrated if all the time is used up talking about topics that are not as urgent. Have meetings that discuss issues of the same size. Have short daily meetings to discuss day-to-day issues. Have longer meetings on a weekly basis to exclusively discuss operational or tactical issues, and leave the bigger strategic topics to once a month in a meeting that lasts for two to three hours. Long enough for you to make real progress on those topics.

The second principle concerns the amount of time that you give to each type of meeting. Day-today issues should take less than ten minutes total for the meeting. And


you could run these quick meetings standing up, to encourage everyone to be brief with what they say. The format for these daily meetings could be as simple as each person answering the following questions: The most important thing I am working on today is…And then if they need any help on this from the other team members. One minute for each person should be enough. And then you are all on the same page. And know if and how you can help each other that day. Operational/tactical issues should be discussed on a weekly basis for no longer than ninety minutes.

And the strategic topics should be discussed for at least two to three hours once a month. Again check the timings of the meetings you are invited to. It is a waste of time to be discussing big important issues in less than two hours. You simply won’t make progress on them and you will need another meeting on them again. The third principle is to do with the Number of people attending the meeting. Aim to have no more than ten people at any meeting and ideally seven or less. More than ten and it’s almost guaranteed that you will not make progress. There is simply not enough time or attention to allow each person to make a meaningful contribution. Every time another person is added the quality of the output will go down. If you are invited to a meeting where you know there are too many people, then speak to the organizer, ask why, and consider not attending yourself. The fourth principle concerns the Location or Venue for the meeting. Ideally, all participants should be in the same room. Of course, in some cases this will not be possible, so video-conferencing is the next best option. A standard conference call is the least best option as we cannot see each other (and what other things we may be doing other than paying full attention to the call!). If you can get everyone together in the same room, or most of them at least, then do that first rather than defaulting to a conference call. The fifth principle is about how people behave during the meeting. We could call this Meeting Etiquette. In order to encourage full attention, we need some basic ground-rules. No laptops open, no checking of phones, no side conversations, no reading of other documents. Just full attention. Listening. Asking questions. Challenging. Participating. With no exceptions. Even for more senior managers. In fact especially for more senior managers. Remind everyone of these rules at the start of the meeting. If someone cannot agree to these simple common-sense guidelines, then they should not be at the meeting. The sixth principle is about using some form of simple and quick Check-In process at the start of your weekly and monthly meetings. This looks like each person answering two simple questions, like... (1. How I am feeling right now is…and 2. The most important topic we should be discussing today is…). This gets everyone present and focused. It also gives you input into what the agenda should be. This process will take less than five minutes, but will add significantly to the quality of your meeting. Just get into the habit of doing this and very soon, everyone will just accept that this is how we work together. Take this part seriously and everyone else will too. If you don’t do this, as the moderator/facilitator, you will not know how everyone is feeling at that point in time and therefore how that might affect their contributions, and you don’t know the priorities for each person. Effectively you will be starting the meeting blind. Not good!


For the daily meetings of five to ten minutes, you don’t really need to this, as these meetings are really just a check-in process by themselves. The seventh principle is to ensure that you adjust the agenda if you need to, based on what was said during the check-in process, and then present it to all the participants. Check that people are broadly OK with it before continuing. The eighth principle is about how the topics and issues are discussed. The ideal in this regard is that everyone speaks freely about what they think and how they feel about the issues being discussed. If someone is saying too much, ask them politely to allow others to speak. If someone is not saying anything, ask them what they think or how they feel about the issue/s. Disagreement and conflict is absolutely to be encouraged. If decisions are about to be made, then explicitly ask if anyone has any disagreements or concerns about it.

We don’t need to agree on everything to be committed to a decision. But to be committed, we do need to understand why a decision is what it is, and we do need to know that everyone has heard our opinions and views about it. If you don’t ask everyone what they think or how they feel about a decision, it’s almost guaranteed that this will lead to a lack of commitment, follow-up and support later. If someone raises an issue that is not directly related to the topic being discussed “park” this for another time. Don’t allow the conversation to lose focus and waste time. Even if it is a more senior person who raises the issue. The ninth principle is about what you can do if the discussions seem to have stalled, but have not yet come to a natural conclusion (for whatever reason). If this happens, consider taking a couple of minutes to do another quick “check-in” type process by saying something like: “It seems to me that we have got stuck. How about we go around the table and each of us say how we think this meeting is going? Let me start…I feel that we…then say how you think the meeting is going. Then turn to the person to your left, and say “What do you think?” Ensure every person in the meeting has the opportunity to say something. By the end of this simple process, you will very likely find that the meeting starts to make progress again, all by itself. The tenth principle concerns any Follow up actions that have been mentioned during the meeting. As decisions and actions are committed to, someone notes them all down, along with who has agreed to do what. This person then runs through this list at the end of the meeting to check understanding and agreement. Make sure you leave enough time to do this. Don’t assume that people understood or were committed to their follow-up actions. This is very important, so please don’t forget this. The eleventh principle is to End the meeting with a simple and quick Check-Out process. Each person to say one sentence about “How they felt the meeting went?” Then you thank each person for their time, attention, and input. This just completes the meeting in a professional way and gives you feedback on how the meeting went, and whether you may need to follow up with any of the participants afterwards.

And lastly principle twelve. After the meeting, reflect on what worked well, what didn’t go so well, and on how you could improve the process for next time. Being disciplined and conscientious about doing this will reinforce the element of continuous


improvement in your own professional skills and abilities, and keep making your meetings better and better. So there you are. The twelve principles that you can use to immediately improve the meetings that you run, and those that you are invited to. As I mentioned at the start, if you are leading the meeting, you can control nearly all of these principles. When you are a participant in meeting that someone else is leading then you can influence how these principles are applied, both before the meeting in conversation with the leader or facilitator, and during the meeting by the way you behave and participate.

So good luck with your meetings. You really can make a big difference by applying these principles in every meeting that you have.


Chapter 18: Leadership and Self-Confidence (1 – Low Self-Esteem)

Video Transcript Hello there. This video is the first one in a series on leadership, self-confidence and self-esteem.

In this one you’ll learn WHY self-confidence and self-esteem are SO important to your performance as a leader and manager. When you feel confident and have a healthy acceptance of yourself – both your strengths and your weaknesses, others will notice this, they’ll respect you more, pay closer attention to what you say, and better help you to achieve your goals. As this happens, you’ll feel less stressed. You’ll enjoy your job more, and your direct reports will want to follow you as their leader and manager. No one wants to follow someone who appears to lack confidence and self-esteem. Simply said, if you have low levels of self-confidence and self-esteem, for whatever reason, it’s unlikely that you’ll be able to produce better results, add more value, and become recognised as a high-performance leader. Self-confidence is often thought to be the same as self-esteem, but there’s a difference that’s important for you to know. Let me explain how I see the difference between the two… Self-confidence is how you feel about your ability to do stuff. Your skills and your knowledge. For example your confidence in your ABILITY to play a certain sport or do a certain job. It’s not that you feel confident about doing everything. Usually just the things you know that you can do well.

It’s your self-confidence that other people see when they look at you doing a certain skill or task. For example, if you’re giving a presentation that you’ve given successfully many times before, you’ll probably appear self-confident.

Self-esteem, on the other hand, lies beneath your self-confidence. If self-confidence is the outer layer of you that shows up when you do something you know how to do well, then self-esteem is the inner core of you. Your self-esteem is what you believe and think about yourself as a person. How much you value yourself. How much worth you attribute to yourself. How you see yourself. Your self-image. If you don’t value yourself very highly or don’t think you have much worth to offer, or you have a negative image of yourself, then you could say you have low self-esteem. This lack of self-esteem may show up in many ways and many situations. And it may even bleed through your apparent self-confidence. You may appear self-confident, but if you’re under stress, in certain situations, others will likely see through it.


For example, back to that situation where you’re making a presentation that you’ve done before. You may start off appearing to be very self-confident because you know your stuff. You know your content.

But…if you have low self-esteem, when the difficult questions start coming your way, that thin veneer of self-confidence could melt away. You may stumble. You may say silly things. Maybe make stuff up. Or even lie. All to hide that fact that internally you’re feeling extremely anxious and worried. Fearful that your audience will judge you as worthless and reject you in some way. When you have a low level of self-esteem, your work-life can be very stressful…

x You don’t stand up for what you think is right.

x You don’t speak up and say exactly what you think or how you feel about things.

x You don’t tell others exactly what you want or need.

x You don’t apply for potential promotions.

x You say yes to nearly all the requests that others make of you.

x You try to fit in with other’s expectations of you.

x You avoid difficult conversations.

x You avoid giving presentations to more senior managers or customers.

x You try to please others people.

x And you try to look good for others so they notice you.

In other words…you do everything you can to avoid any possibility that others will judge you as worthless and therefore reject you in some way. You’re avoiding situations that might confirm the negative self-image that you have of yourself. This can then mean you working very long hours, feeling very stressed, and putting up with bosses who you don’t like, you don’t respect, and who don’t give you what you need to perform well. And also putting up with situations that you don’t want to be in. Over the course of your life, the cost and impact of having low self-esteem is huge in every respect. Psychologically, your health, your finances, and your family. On the other hand when you’re confident about what you can do AND your self-esteem is strong your chances of being a high-performance leader are much much higher. Imagine yourself feeling OK…content and happy about who you are and the value that you have to offer. Not some fake and arrogant surface level coating. But a much much deeper level of knowing that you have value, that you have worth. You are competent at what you do. Yes you have your faults and your weaknesses, but that’s ok. So does everyone.

You’re happy with who you are - as you are. Just very naturally being you. Others can think what they want. Now…imagine what feeling like that all the time would make possible for you. In your professional life and in your personal life too.

x Standing up for what you believe in.


x Saying exactly what you think and how you feel.

x Speaking up in meetings.

x Taking opportunities to learn, grow, take more responsibility, and get promoted.

x Saying NO when you want to.

x Not wasting time worrying about what others think of you.

x Having difficult conversations if you need to.

x Confidently giving presentations to your peers, more senior managers, and your customers.

As you build your self-esteem and do more of these things, others will notice. They’ll respect you more. They’ll pay more attention to you. Your direct reports will want to follow you. And your results and performance will improve.

In the next video you’ll learn about the sources of low self-esteem. The reasons WHY some of us may have low self-esteem. Because only when we know that, can we do something about it. I’ll see you in the next video.


Chapter 19: Leadership and Self-Confidence (2 – The Sources of Low Self-Esteem)

Video Transcript Hello there, This video is the second one in a series on leadership, self-confidence and self-esteem.

In this one you’ll learn what causes low self-esteem, and why having low self-esteem will ruin your chances of becoming a high-performance leader. When you know what causes low self-esteem, you’ll be able to recognise it happening in yourself and also those that you lead and manage. Let’s get straight to the key message here - the most important thing that you can learn. The cause of low self-esteem is faulty or inaccurate thinking.

Basically, we have unhelpful thoughts, assumptions, and beliefs about ourselves that are inaccurate, unbalanced, and in many cases just plain wrong. Over our lives we’ve unconsciously built up a picture and a set of beliefs about what good looks like for us, about how we should look, how we should act, what we should have and achieve, and what success looks like. And then we continually compare ourselves to that picture.

If that picture of good that we’ve built ourselves is near perfect then we’ll never measure up to it. And therefore we’ll continuously think that we’re failing and then we’ll feel bad about ourselves. And our self-esteem will drop.

And of ALL the voices in our head, all the thoughts that we have, one of them in particular, the INTERNAL CRITIC, just goes on and on about how we’re not measuring up against that picture of good. The internal critic is the part of us that’s continuously judging us. The internal critic says things like; “You’ll never be good enough”, “They all think I’m stupid”,

“See I told you you’re a failure”, “You should do this. You ought to do that”, “You shouldn’t do that, that’s too risky”,

That voice can go on and on and on. Your internal critic is always comparing you to that picture of good. The problem is that we believe that internal critic. We don’t question it. We believe that it’s right. And that’s why we feel bad about ourselves and not good enough.


The cost of you listening to AND believing everything that your internal critic says is huge. So if we now know that the cause of low self-esteem is our internal critic comparing us to a picture of good that’s wholly unrealistic, let’s discover where that picture of good originally came from. Well, that picture got painted as we grew up. The colours and shades were strongly informed by our parents or other primary caregivers. It was also painted by our teachers, role-models, our peers and our friends. By our religion if we have one. And all the other influences in our lives as we grew up.

And as you and I were growing up, we probably didn’t stop to think consciously about what WE would like that picture of good to look like. Because we were young and impressionable, we just adopted and believed what others said to us.

In order to get attention, to feel OK, and reduce potential stress, we just believed what others said to us about what good looked like. About what we should do. What we must do. What we need to do…in order to be OK, to be successful, or to be loved.

It was mostly painted by other people. And we then spent the rest of our lives comparing ourselves against that picture. Or at least our internal critic has spent most of its life comparing us against that picture, then telling us when we are not matching up. In fact it’s sometimes even worse than that. Our internal critic may also warn us against doing anything that might move us towards being like that picture of good. So when we’re thinking about doing something to possibly improve ourselves in some way, it tells us that it would be too risky, and that we would likely fail. So…it compares us against the picture and criticizes us when we don’t match up to it, then actively tries to stop us from improving ourselves. I know it sounds bizarre. But look at your own experience and see if this makes sense. Our internal critic is also very good at comparing us against other people who seem to look like that picture of good. So it may also say things like: “You’ll never be as good as them, or successful as them, or as beautiful as them”. As so our self-esteem goes down again.

Your internal critic is helped and supported by a set of thinking patterns that make your thinking inaccurate and sometimes just plain wrong. And you’re probably not even aware of those patterns. You can’t see them.

But when you can see them. You’ll realize why your internal critic keeps talking, putting you down, and causing your low self-esteem. Let’s now take a look at those thinking patterns now…

1. We may tend to generalise. If we fail at one thing, we might then apply that failure to everything. So we may think that because we’re no good at this one thing, we’re no good at everything, and then our self-esteem gets lower.


2. We may tend to think we know what others are thinking about us. And we often assume that what they’re thinking about us is in some way bad. And so our self-esteem gets lower.

3. We may tend to filter out the many good things that happen because of us and for us, and not notice them, and only pay attention to the few bad things that happen. We can then spend much of our time thinking about those few bad things that have happened, not being grateful for all the good things, and our self-esteem gets even lower. 4. We may tend to think that something is either good or bad. Right or wrong. With no in between. And funnily enough we apply the bad or the wrong judgement to most things around us. And our self-esteem can get lower. 5. We may turn everything we experience into a catastrophe or crisis. We may expect disaster and then look for evidence of it. Then make the scale of it even bigger and put ourselves at the centre of it. And our self-esteem can get lower. 6. We may blame others for what happens to us, for situations we find ourselves in, and also how we feel. We may blame our family, friends, work colleagues, bosses, and direct reports. And because we place the cause of our life and happiness outside of ourselves, with others, we give away all our power. And yet again, our self-esteem gets less. 7. Or we may blame ourselves for everything. It’s all our fault. We may feel responsible for how all the others around us feel. And when we blame ourselves in this way, guess what? Our self-esteem gets lower. 8. And lastly, we may tend to believe we know what fair and right looks like. And then we expect others to have that same view of what fair looks like too. And of course they don’t. And that may lead us to see unfairness everywhere and have us feel like we’re being treated unfairly. And our self-esteem get’s even lower. So our internal critic uses all these faulty thinking patterns to support its comments. These faulty thinking patterns don’t accurately represent the truth of the present reality. In simple terms, much of your thinking may not match reality as it actually is. Your thinking may be warped in all these ways. Sometimes a little. Sometimes a lot.

And the main problem is that you and I don’t even realize that this is happening. We just believe that our thinking is accurate and feel and act accordingly. And when we believe the thoughts from our internal critic, our self-esteem will be less.

Basically…Inaccurate Thinking = Low Self-Esteem The question now is how do we start to fix all this. To make our thinking more accurate, so that it better reflects reality as it is, and to stop all these attacks on our self-esteem by our internal critic. It should be clear for you now that it’s our thinking that we need to focus on. It’s our thinking that holds the key to self-confidence, self-esteem, and high-performance leadership. Seeking external achievements for yourself will not improve your self-esteem. You may achieve great things externally, but your internal critic will keep playing its games. It will still keep judging you and putting you down. So as I said, it’s your thinking that needs to change and become more accurate. In the next video you’ll learn how to improve your self-esteem.


You’ll learn the specific antidote and solution to low self-esteem. When you know what that solution is, your life will become a great deal more rewarding and far less stressful. And your leadership capability will improve dramatically. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.


Chapter 20: Leadership and Self-Confidence (3 – The Power of Self-Acceptance)

Video Transcript In this video you’ll learn how to build your own self-esteem. You’ll also learn what having a high level of self-esteem looks like and why this is so important for your leadership. Let’s start by sharing some situations with you - that you’ll probably be familiar with. Firstly, imagine yourself giving a presentation to a group of more senior managers or clients of yours. Seriously, imagine standing there in front of them as you present your ideas and suggestions. In that situation you’re feeling confident.

Even though the questions come thick and fast at you, you hold your ground. You answer the questions when they come. And if you don’t know the answer you just say you don’t know.

There’s never a thought in your head from your internal critic that says…”oh what will they think of me”, or “what happens if I say something stupid”, or “what happens if they don’t agree with me”, or “I don’t know what I’m doing here”.

Why are those thoughts from your internal critic not there in your mind? Because you’ve trained yourself to notice the games that your internal critic plays. And because, at a deep level you know that the situation, the presentation doesn’t really matter. In some sense, you don’t care. I know that sounds strange, but stick with me here. Yes you are there to add value and offer your insights. But if they don’t like you or what you have to say, then so what?

You are simply present. Being with those that you are talking to. Lets try another situation… Imagine that your boss sends you an email telling you to do something that you know to be a waste of time.

Now rather than panicking, and immediately replying and saying yes, and putting whatever else you were working on to one side, to do this thing, you calmly stand up, walk across to your bosses office, knock on the door, say Hi, and discuss his request with him. The two of you agree that actually it’s not as important as what you’re working on presently, and you agree to discuss it again the following week. You leave, walk back to your desk, and focus on what’s most important to you. And there’s no residual thoughts or worries for you about what your boss might think of you.


And a third situation…Someone on your team is trying to undermine you. This person is gossiping behind your back and sabotaging your plans. And you have the facts to prove that this is the case.

Now, rather than worrying about it and avoiding the person, making excuses for them, and blaming yourself, you have a conversation with them immediately. You calmly explain the situation, present the facts that you have, the impact that it’s having, and ask them to describe it from their point of view. You also tell them what the consequences will be if it continues. And if it continues, you replace them, and explain to the rest of the team why. The whole thing is dealt with quickly and fairly.

What enables you to feel so confident in these situations? To be at ease in them? Your healthy self-esteem, for sure. But more specifically, its your healthy level of self-acceptance that enables you to be like this. And its self-acceptance that is the solution to low self-esteem. Self-acceptance is you accepting yourself in spite of any deficiencies you may think you have. Accepting your strengths, your weaknesses, successes, failures, all the good stuff you like about yourself, and all the bad stuff you don’t like about yourself. All of it. All the things you deny or reject about yourself. Accepting that it’s all a part of you. Self-acceptance is you knowing that you have value. That you have worth. That you are worthy.

You know that you have strengths and that you also have weaknesses too. You know that rejection doesn’t matter. And that you won’t allow yourself to be manipulated by others trying to make you feel fear.

And you won’t let your internal critic make you feel bad about yourself either. But far more importantly, you know at a deep level that you have unique value. By being accepting of your weaknesses, this doesn’t mean that you don’t want to improve. Of course its natural to want to improve, but the difference is that this desire is driven from a healthy place, and not a place of judgement and blame.

So you can be both self-accepting AND looking for ways to improve. From a leadership perspective…people are naturally attracted to those who have a high level of self-acceptance and are comfortable with themselves.

People are repelled by those who’re not confident and who’re always doubting themselves. We respect other people who’re not afraid of standing up for what they believe in.

People who don’t just agree with things because they’re worried about rocking the boat. So the question now becomes…how do you build a healthy level of self-acceptance?


How can you change your thinking in order to do this? In the next video in this series, I’ll show you exactly how to do that. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next video.


Chapter 21: Leadership and Self-Confidence (4 – How to Improve Your Self-Esteem)

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you’ll learn how you can improve your self-confidence and self-esteem by changing your thinking and increasing your self-acceptance. Self-acceptance is the magic cure for low self-esteem. As you learn to be more accepting of yourself - your strengths, weaknesses, successes, and failures, then life becomes a whole lot better. You’ll feel far less stress. You’ll bounce back from upsets and set-backs far quicker. You’ll be more resilient. Your self-esteem will improve. And as that happens you’ll become a more effective leader and manager, and your performance will improve too. What you learn in this video, could be the most important thing you ever learn to improve your leadership.

Because it’s not just about you building your own self-esteem. It also means that you can help to build the self-esteem of everyone who ever works with you or for you. And being able to do that is high-performance leadership right there.

Ok, so let’s get into it. There’s some simple preliminary work for you to do – then - there’s a three-step process that will help you improve the accuracy and quality of your thinking, and therefore your self-esteem and your leadership. So firstly, the prelim work… The intention here is for you to take a good look at your past and your present. Imagine it’s like doing a stock-check of who you are, what you’ve achieved in your life, what you’ve failed at, what your strengths are and what your weaknesses are. The purpose of doing this is to give you an accurate and balanced view of who you are. For you to prove to yourself that you have significant value to add for others. That you are a worthy person. So next to this video is a simple worksheet for you to download and use to do this. If you do nothing else after watching this video please, please, download and complete this worksheet. OK, so now let’s look at the three-step process that you can use on a daily basis to improve your self-esteem.

In a previous video in this series we learned that low self-esteem is caused by faulty, inaccurate, and unbalanced thinking. In other words, the thoughts you have about


yourself are not representative of the truth about you. They are messed up in a whole bunch of ways by your own internal critic. So this simple three-step process is about fixing that situation.

This is how it works… Step One is very simple… You Notice. You notice the thoughts that you have. The thoughts that are going through your mind. Especially the thoughts that come from your internal critic. The ones that say things like: “Your not good enough”, or “See I told you so”, or “Don’t do that it’s too risky”, or “Why do you think you can do that?”, “You’ll never be any good”, or “You’re a bad person”, or “You’re not worth anything”. The first step is to pay much closer attention to those thoughts. To notice when they arise and what they are saying. And those thoughts can be very very sneaky. They can work themselves into your mind in very subtle ways so that you don’t notice them. The idea with this first step is for you to get up on the balcony, or take the helicopter view, and to notice those thoughts when they emerge.

Sometimes, you might not notice them until they’ve been running through your mind for quite some time. That’s OK. That’s fine. You did eventually notice them. As your noticing skill improves, you’ll notice them more often, and you’ll notice them quicker. Sometimes, in the moment as they’re happening. That’s all the first step is. Noticing your thoughts. And especially the ones from your internal critic.

As you develop this skill, you’ll become the observer of your thoughts and not just the participant of them. You’ll perhaps notice them like you would notice words and sentences moving across a movie screen at the cinema. Over time you’ll start to realize that you have thoughts, but you are not your thoughts.

Don’t try to force those inaccurate or negative thoughts away, or to resist them. That won’t work. They’re very persistent. There’s something far more powerful that you can do…

Now onto the second step… Step two is also simple and it’s this… When you notice the thoughts from your internal critic, you Ask a Question, about those thoughts? So you notice a thought like; “You’re not good enough”, or “That’s too risky”, or “They think your stupid”, or “It’s all my fault”, or “I am a failure”, and then you immediately ask the following three questions. The first question is…How could that thought be inaccurate, faulty, or untrue? The second question is…What is a more accurate thought to have about this?

And the third question is…What’s the best action for me to take now? [Repeat…] How could that thought be inaccurate, faulty, or untrue?


What is a more accurate thought to have about this? What’s the best action for me to take now? As you ask those three questions, you’ll immediately see how inaccurate the original thought was, you’ll make it more accurate, then…you’ll see options for you to take action, if you want to. The questions will cause an internal enquiry for you that will neutralize those type of thoughts. As this happens, you’ll notice your negative feelings of low self-esteem that were caused by the original thought start to subside.

So step two is about challenging the original negative thought with these three questions, and then having the internal enquiry that follows. That internal inquiry may also help you understand how your internal picture of good got created in the first place. Who the painters of that picture in your past were. Who’s voices it was that told you, you must do this, or it should be like that. Or who told you that you weren’t good enough.

This isn’t about blaming anyone. It’s just about knowing where the voices and opinions came from. And here’s the third step for you.

It’s very simply, for you to take some kind of action. The third of those questions has already pointed you in the right direction and given you some ideas.

The action that you take depends on the situation about which the original critical thought occurred. If it was about an important conversation that you know you need to have, you may choose to actually go and have that conversation.

If it was in relation to a potential opportunity at work, you may choose to take that opportunity. If it was about an important decision that you know you need to make, you may choose to make that decision. If it’s in the middle of a meeting where you disagree about something, you may choose to speak up and say what you think.

If it’s something that you disagree with you boss about, you may choose to discuss your disagreements with him or her. In other words, you may choose to take an action that you may not have taken as a result of believing the original critical thought. Even if it’s something much more trivial than those examples, and by asking the question, the whole thing just dissolves, with nothing that you need to do about it, you can take the simple action of just smiling and saying to your internal critic, “Thanks for sharing”. You can’t fight that internal critic. It will never completely go away. But what you can do is notice when it speaks up through those critical and inaccurate thoughts, question


those thoughts to either dissolve them or make them more balanced, and then take action of some kind. As you do this, the internal critic will grow quieter and quieter. In fact, it will get to the point that the only time you’ll notice it, is when it’s a good idea to notice it. When it’s point of view is worth you paying attention to. Then it becomes a friend and a guide. So that’s the three steps:

Firstly…noticing your thoughts, especially the critical ones. Secondly…to Question those thoughts to dissolve them or reframe them, and then… Thirdly…to take an Action of some kind. Big or small.

As you do these things, they’ll become habits, and your self-esteem and your self-confidence will grow. And as that happens, your leadership ability will grow too. Others will start to notice this. And your results will improve.

All this won’t happen overnight, but it will happen. Every time you question a critical thought and take a small action that you wouldn’t have otherwise taken, you’re building your self-acceptance, your self-esteem and your self-confidence.

In terms of your quality of life and how you feel every day, this could be the most important habit that you develop. Imagine a level of self-acceptance and self-esteem that’s so healthy and strong that nothing can negatively affect it. Like a rock. Impervious to attack by wind or rain. From time to time, storms will happen around you. Life will throw situations at you that you’d rather it didn’t. But you just stand there. Letting it all roll over you.

Of course there maybe a wobble or you may even fall down. But you don’t stay down very long. You’re up quick, dusting yourself off, and getting back in the game. Now that’s worth learning a few simple habits to achieve. So there are three worksheets for you to download:

The first one is the preliminary exercise to balance your past and present. The second one gives you those three questions. You could print this off and stick it up in your office, or keep it in your wallet.

You could also use it to do a bigger enquiry about a specific negative thought from your internal critic. Writing out your answers in more detail. And the third worksheet is a list of other things that you could also do to build your self-acceptance, self-esteem, and self-confidence. So please download those worksheets now. Thanks so much for watching this video. I hope you found it useful.


Leadership and Improving Your Self-Esteem

When you notice your internal critic playing its games, ask yourself the following questions. As you continue to do this, the questions will become a habit for you. And over time your internal critic will get quieter and quieter.

The first question is…

How could that thought be inaccurate, faulty, or untrue? The second question is…

What is a more accurate thought to have about this?

And the third question is…

What’s the best action for me to take now?


Other ways to Improve your Self-Confidence, Self-Esteem, and Self-Acceptance… In addition to the specific practice you learned in the fourth video in this series, here is a list of other things that will all contribute to you feeling more confident, and having higher self-esteem and self-acceptance – and therefore a more effective Leader.

x Regular exercise (even if it’s just walking). A balance of aerobic and anaerobic is good. Adding some weights to the mix also helps. Most important is to find activities that you enjoy.

x Eat healthily – more vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, meat and fish (less carbs, especially sugar). There are lots of differing opinions on this subject – use your own judgement about what’s right for you. Forget diets and measuring your weight all the time.

x Meditation – there are lots of types to choose from (doesn’t really matter which). Benefits only really come from it being a regular practice for you.

x Stop reading Men’s or Women’s Lifestyle magazines and websites (and celebrity type magazines) – they only encourage comparisons.

x Practice Gratitude – before you fall asleep at night and when you wake up in the morning, pause for a moment and say (or just think) “Thank You”. Another option here is to pause, be quiet, relax, close your eyes – and remember all the people on your life who have helped you in one way or another – and as you remember each one, say (or just think) “Thank You”. Repeat often.

x Get some Sleep – you know how much you need, so make sure you get it. An ongoing lack of sleep is not good for your body or mind.

x Take time out to get Perspective – weekends away, holidays, and vacations. Time away can help you remember what’s most important in your life and that there is more to it than just work.

x Stop checking your phone / email every five minutes – this is a constant distraction from focusing your attention on what’s most important for you.

x Beware of too much Social Media – yes it’s interesting and fun, but don’t forget what’s happening around you right now.

x Spend time with those you Love – and who accept you for who you are.

x Be kind to yourself – and remember we are all here for such a short time, let’s enjoy the precious time we have!


Chapter 22: The Neuroscience of Leadership


In this video you’ll learn how to improve your leadership and create the optimum conditions for high-performance within your team. I’ll share with you just one very simple question that crystalizes decades of research in the field of emotional intelligence and neuroscience. Asking yourself this one simple question on a regular basis will immediately tell you what you need to do to provide the best possible leadership for your direct reports.

Firstly…what problem are we trying to solve here? Well ultimately…How do you improve the quality of the thinking, problem solving, interaction, and decision making of your direct reports?

As that happens, performance will improve. So how do we do that? Well, the field of emotional intelligence and neuroscience, tells us both how to do it and how not to do it. Your ability to think creatively, come up with smart ideas, make great decisions, and behave in a productive way is strongly affected by your emotions. Particularly when you feel the emotions of fear and anger. In other words when you feel under stress of some kind. When you feel stressed about something. Which is another way of saying you feel threatened in some way, the levels of adrenaline and cortisol in your body increase. Adrenaline and cortisol directly reduce the processing of information and energy by the upper parts of your brain. They do this as part of the fight-flight reaction to a threat. Trying to enable you to survive whatever the threat to your physical body. We have survived by not thinking in threatening situations. Just by acting quickly. Running away or fighting. Unfortunately, this process of protecting us from real and present physical threats is the same process that trys to protect us from perceived threats. The threats that we just imagine. For example, that’s why you should never hit the reply button to an email that lands in your inbox that has pushed your buttons and that you are angry about. In some way you feel threatened by something. And at that moment, adrenaline and cortisol is racing around your body, actively preventing you from thinking. If you reply at that moment, your response is likely to be similar to that from a child. Not good.


Raised levels of those hormones on an ongoing basis prevents the neurons in your brain from making connections, and processing energy and information. If you are constantly feeling stressed, which as I said, is another word for threatened, you will constantly have raised levels of adrenaline and cortisol in your body, and your thinking, decision making, and behavior will be sub-optimal. And over time your brain will make less connections, and therefore be less able to process information.

If your team members or direct reports are constantly feeling stressed, then the same thing applies. Lower quality thinking, decision making, and behavior. And over time, less brain capacity to process information.

There’s no getting around this. It’s just how our brains work. It’s what the research proves. So what can we do about it?

How can we reduce the stress levels of our team members? So here’s where that one simple question comes in… All of us from the day that we were born are continually trying to avoid feeling stressed. To avoid feeling threatened. And we are programmed to look for others who can help us feel safe and comfortable. We are qlways looking to reduce our anxiety. And this is where we get to leadership and you.

Your direct reports are always, usually unconsciously, looking to you as their leader and manager to help them feel safe and comfortable. And reduce their stress and anxiety.

In the back of their minds. Deep in their subconscious. They are asking one simple question of you: “Are you there for me?” “Are you there for me?”

If their answer to that question is Yes, then they will feel less stress and anxiety, they will have less adrenaline and cortisol in their bodies, and therefore they will be able to think, make good decisions, and be far more productive.

If their answer to that question is No, then they will feel increased stress and anxiety. Their levels of those two hormones will be high, and their ability to think, make decisions, and behave productively, will be about the same as a screaming five year old. Seriously, it’s exactly the same thing we are talking about here. And all your direct reports are asking this question about you, right now. They are not saying it out loud. They’re probably not even having that conscious thought. But in their sub-conscious mind, they are asking it. And what answer are they getting? If you are not there for them, you’re in trouble.

What do you need to do, to be there for them? To help them to learn and grow. To support them.

To give them direction.


To listen to and understand them. To shield them from the organizational chaos and politics. To create the conditions where their stress levels are low, and their ability to think well, act well, and make great decisions is high? Or…are you distant, detached, and absorbed with your own stuff. Just telling them what to do.

Criticising them when they make mistakes. Threatening to fire them if they don’t do what you say. Ignoring them when they have something to say.

Only you know the answers to those questions… So ask yourself the question right now… Are you there for them?

Really there for them? And please download the simple worksheet next to this video and discover all the many things that you can do, to make sure that the answer to that question is YES.

Thanks for watching.


The Big Brain Question Worksheet The Big Brain Question from neuropsychologist Mark Brady is: “Are you there for me?” It's a fundamental assessment our brains make continuously whether we're aware of it or not. What can you do as a leader and manager to ensure that when your direct reports and team members ask that question of you, the answer they get is a resounding Yes?

The following list should give you some ideas:

x Have regular high quality one-to-one meetings, during which you ask questions and listen openly at least 80% of the time.

x Make sure you know the work goals and aspirations of your direct reports.

x Get the team together periodically to discuss what direction the team is heading

in.

x Ensure that each of your direct reports has a simple plan for their professional learning and development over the next 12 months. And support them with funds, if required, to attend training courses.

x Think about what opportunities there may be outside of your team that would

be good for your direct reports. And encourage and help them to take those opportunities.

x Give high-quality, one-to-one, authentic feedback to your direct reports. And ask

for it back from them. Emphasize learning edges.

x Find opportunities for each of your direct reports to present to the whole team and facilitate a discussion.

x Encourage each of your direct reports to find a mentor. Help them find one if

necessary.

x Ask each of your direct reports what you can do to make their jobs easier or more enjoyable (some specifics). Then make at least some of that happen quickly.

x If you’re micro-managing – stop doing it ! Give people space. Support them. Let

them fail. Coach them. If they still don’t perform and/or don’t want to, help them find better-matched opportunities.


Chapter 23: What is a High-Performance Team?

Video Transcript In this video you will learn what it’s like to be a part of a High-Performing Team. You will learn what a high-performing team looks like, feels like, and how it operates.

And as you learn these things you will also discover some specific ways that you can start to build your own high-performing team. OK, so let’s get going…

Imagine now that you and I are members of a high-performing team. We both love being a part of this team. The work we do is both important and meaningful. You and I, and the other members of our team consistently deliver at least what is expected of us, and usually far more. We are always looking for ways to innovate and improve performance. Together we add value across the business. We work effectively on cross-functional projects requiring high levels of collaboration. We have a strong focus on adding-value for our customers. In terms of what is most important to us…the things that we value…We are results focused. We want to achieve things and make a difference. We all want to learn and develop ourselves, each other, and the people that report to us. Team-working and collaboration is very important. It sounds rather corny, but we always think about what is best for the whole team and not just what is best for us as individuals. We really value the ability to say what we think and how we feel about issues and topics. It is unacceptable on our team for people to withhold themselves and be closed. It doesn’t help them or the team.

We can all say exactly what we think, even if it leads to healthy disagreement because we trust and respect each other. In fact we respect each other so much that we hold each other accountable for both our performance and behaviours.

If someone doesn’t do what they said they would do, or they behave in an unproductive way, one of us will say something to that person immediately. And when this happens, the person is grateful and doesn’t take offence. And how do you and I feel, being a part of this team? Well, we are excited to come to work. We are open to challenge and feedback. We are confident about our value-add to the business. We feel proud to be a part of this team. We know and feel that we will be supported. We know that our efforts are Acknowledged and well rewarded. We know that we will be challenged if we are not playing for our team. We feel that we learn more from being a part of this team than anywhere else.

We know we could find another position in another organization, if we had to and would instantly add value there too. We don’t want to move, but if we did, we know


that we could do it. Because of this we are not driven to say things or do things because we are worried about losing our jobs. And let’s review for a moment the specific behaviours and tools that we use that drive our superior performance. Things that an outside observer could actually see us doing. We frequently refer to and talk about our overarching Goals and Objectives.

We always look for the Opportunity in every crisis, upset, or mistake. We always do some kind of Check-in process at the start of our meetings and conference calls.

Our meeting etiquette is first class (everyone on time, paying full attention, no checking of emails, no open laptops). We listen and pay attention to each other. We regularly use an Action Learning type format to solve problems. At least once every couple of weeks. We use a Group Feedback Process three or four times a year. We meet for an Off-Site Event at least Three times a year to discuss the most important strategic issues. We have a Coaching session with our team leader at least once a month and we have coaching sessions with each of our direct reports at least once every two weeks.

We individually Reflect on our reactive behaviours and learn from them. We Challenge people in the moment when they seem to react in a negative way. Nothing is left unsaid between us. We say what we need to say.

We think about what is best for the team (not just an individual department) and going out of our way to help each other. We keep our agreements and promises. And when we make mistakes, we take responsibility and accept accountability. There is no blaming happening. It’s also interesting to notice how other people in the wider organization see us, think about us, and talk about us.

We are seen to achieve results and make things happen (even difficult things). Other people in the business remark that we operate as one team. They want to know how we do it.

And talented people want to join us. They see us as role-models of a high-performing team within the business. And that feels good.

And sometimes you and I wonder how it came to be this way. How our team came to be seen as a role-model of a high-performing team. Because it wasn’t always this way. In fact we used to be rather dysfunctional.

And we remember how it all started. One of the team just had the courage to speak up during a meeting and say what all of us had been thinking for a long time. That they had had enough of the way we worked together. That it was causing them stress and frustration. And that it didn’t have to be that way. That we were capable of


far more. And as they spoke, all of us nodded our heads. We shared those thoughts and feelings too. There was silence for a while.

And then we collectively agreed to change things. To find practical ways to improve how we worked together and to improve our collective results. And gradually we did just that. Each month we added some new ways of working. And each month our performance, our satisfaction, and our sense of purpose improved. And as you and I know, it was well worth it. OK…So now let’s just pull out of that story and get up on the balcony for a moment.

Can YOU be that person that started it all? Have you got the courage to say that the way your team works now is not good, that it is not working, and that you are all capable of much more. For the sake of yourselves, and those you serve. Your customers or clients. Or maybe it is working OK, but you know that you all are capable of far more. Can you say that to your colleagues? And if you don’t say it, then who will? And how long can you accept the way things are now? What have you got to lose? Really. So I encourage you to start your own performance revolution within the team that you now work. And start to improve things. Day by day, week by week, month by month, and see the progress that you make. To begin to see what is really possible. What you are truly capable of. You will find all the tools that you need to start doing that right here. Simple things that you can start doing immediately to improve performance. So please start watching some of the other videos and downloading the audios and activity guides. And from time to time, you may want to come back to this video and watch it again, so that you can remind yourself what it feels like to be a part of a high-performing team, and some of the practices that it takes to get there. Good Luck.


Chapter 24: Leadership Vs Management


In this short video you’ll learn the difference between leadership and management. This simple distinction is very important. When you know the difference between leadership and management, you’ll be able to tell whether the things you are doing, are leadership type things or management type things. You’ll also be able to see where you can build your skills to be more effective and improve performance.

If you don’t know the difference between the two, you may be spending too much time and energy on one and not enough on the other, and therefore limiting your performance.

And I’m not saying here that one is more important or better than the other. They’re both important. So firstly, let’s understand what leadership is…

Leadership is about… seeing the bigger picture, thinking strategically, having a purpose and vision, taking risks, doing the right things, giving direction, making a positive difference, and challenging the status quo.

It’s about… motivating, inspiring, influencing, and developing other people. Building relationships with them and caring about them. It’s about building trust with the people you need to help you.

Great leaders set big goals and inspire others to work together to achieve them. So, leadership is primarily about direction and influence. Direction in terms of knowing where you want to go.

And influence in terms of your ability to get others to help you to move in that direction and achieve the results you want. They need to believe in you, trust you, and be motivated by you.

In simple terms, your ability to change in some way how they think, how they behave, and the decisions and actions that they take. In other words, you being and doing such that others want to follow you in some way. And you don’t need to have direct reports to be a leader. This is not about position or job title. Like I said, leadership is about influence. Influencing others to think differently, see opportunities and possibilities, and to take action. Those other people, whoever they are, should feel better in some way, for having been influenced by you. Let’s now look at management and what that means.


Management is about…getting stuff done. Planning, scheduling, delegating, measuring, reporting, ticking boxes, coordinating, checking, getting things done right. It’s about managing the day-to-day problems. Fixing things when they need to be fixed. Looking after the basics. And such things are absolutely critical for performance. When you are managing effectively, your direct reports know what they have to do, what their objectives are, what support they have, how to get that support, and what authority they have to make decisions. It looks like you putting systems in place, having a way to measure progress, and a way to make improvements. Now of course there is some overlap between what we are calling leadership and management. And there will also be differences of opinion. It doesn’t really matter.

What’s important is that you know the main components of each. So that you can see how you are spending your time. And what skills you need to build. Some people are great leaders, but not so good managers. Some people are great managers, but not so good leaders. And some people are just technically brilliant, but neither good leaders or managers. And of course a few rare individuals are great at both.

Like I said, when it comes to leading and managing, one is not necessarily more important than the other. They are different groups of things. However, with that said, I would suggest to you that being a good manager will only get you so far in your career. Yes you absolutely need to be able to get stuff done. But to really improve performance, produce better results, and get promoted into more senior positions, you’ll need to be an effective leader too. Someone who can set direction and who can influence others to change the way they think, behave, and act.

Now, I sense that for most of us, the managing part probably feels easier than the leading bit. And I think that that’s because managing is more about things, tasks, processes, and procedures, but leadership is primarily about people.

And because it’s about people, it can bring up a whole bunch of challenges for us. Whereas managing by doing things like making plans, giving instructions, measuring results, and then reporting them, is relatively straightforward in terms of you knowing what needs to be done. Leading and influencing other people can seem like it’s a lot trickier. People are not machines. You don’t know what they’re thinking. You can’t control them like you can a process. And that’s why I think that more people can manage well than can lead well. In general terms, for most people, it’s easier to manage than it is to lead.

Because of that, leadership skills tend to be more valuable than management skills. And that’s why if you want to improve performance and results, it’s probably worth you spending more time and effort improving your leadership skills.

You’ll always be able to find good managers who can get stuff done.


That’s why most of the work I do with managers and their teams is about improving their leadership skills. Therefore most of the training content I create is also about improving leadership skills too. So two things… Firstly…next to this video is a quick and simple worksheet that you can download and spend just ten minutes completing. It will tell you where you are spending your time now in terms of leading and managing, and how effective you are being at each. When you’ve done it, it should be obvious to you where you could spend more time and improve your performance. Secondly…to improve your leadership take a look at the other videos in the high-performance hub, and try the exercises too. By yourself and with those that you lead and manage. Thanks for watching this video. I hope that’s been useful for you.


Leading, Managing, and You… Leadership Activities: Management Activities:

x Seeing the Bigger Picture and Thinking Strategically

x Focusing only on the Most Important Things x Communicating a Purpose and Vision x Taking Risks x Doing the Right Things x Giving Direction x Challenging the Status Quo x Motivating, Inspiring and Influencing x Developing your Direct Reports x Building Relationships x Building Trust x Managing Talent

x Getting Stuff Done x Managing Day-to-Day problems x Fixing Things x Looking after the Basics x Setting Individual Objectives x Planning x Scheduling x Delegating x Measuring x Reporting x Coordinating x Checking x Getting things done right

Q1: What % of your time do you spend on i) Leadership type activities? And ii) Management Activities?

Q2: Why do you think your time is allocated in that way?

Q3: Which of these two sets of activities are you most comfortable doing, and why?

Q4: What “big things” are you working on now that absolutely require more/better leadership from you?

Q5: What is the most important leadership activity/activities for you to improve upon so that you achieve those big things?

Q6: How (specifically) will you do that?

Q7: What support do you need to do this?

Q8: How will you know that you are improving on this?

Q9: What (specifically) will you do in the next week to start on this?

NB: Remember… ”High-Performamce Leaders…i) Deliver significant performance improvements…ii) By influencing others to take actions…iii) Whilst managing their own fears about the risks involved.


Chapter 25: Responsibility – The Source of High-Performance

Video Transcript Hello there, In this video you’ll learn what’s at the heart of all personal, team, and organizational transformation. An idea so simple, yet so powerful, that when you realise it’s importance, you’ll notice it’s presence or it’s absence everywhere. And part of you probably won’t like what you’re about to hear. This part of you may find many reasons to make what you hear me say wrong or invalid. And that’s exactly the reason it’s so important. So let’s get going… Remember the last time you worked on a team that you could describe as dysfunctional. You know, meetings were a waste of time. No one supported each other. Lots of hidden agendas. No one taking ownership or accountability. No one taking any initiative. Lots of blaming. Low levels of trust and mediocre results. You didn’t enjoy the experience very much. And it was probably stressful and exhausting. In those situations, it’s the absence of one thing that leads to the dysfunctional behavior. And that one thing is “Responsibility”… Responsibility is always at the heart, the centre, and the source of high-performance. I’m sorry if that sounds simplistic, but it’s true. Without a high level of responsibility within yourself and within your team, you will get dysfunction, and mediocre or poor results. With a high level of responsibility, you will achieve superior results.


The word responsibility is often defined in terms of duty and obligation. Whilst that may be a part of it, how I’m defining it here is slightly different. By responsibility, what I’m talking about is…you and I being the cause and the source, of all of our experiences of life. And not being responsible means “Being at the effect of your experiences of life”. Imagine being the cause of everything that happens in your life. Your upbringing, education, relationships, career, health, wealth, and happiness. The cause of it all. Most people don’t want to even consider that much responsibility. Which is why most people spend all their time moaning about things. It’s their boss’ fault. Their co-workers fault. It’s the system, the government. It’s their upbringing. Anything else but them. Let’s make this real for you… Remember the last time you walked out of a meeting feeling that it was a waste of your time. Nothing was resolved. A decision wasn’t made. Issues were just left to be discussed at the next meeting. You blame the guy who runs these meetings. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. And the people at the meeting just sit there not saying anything. And this happens at the same meeting every month. In other words, you are placing the cause of these bad meetings on other people. Not yourself. Now here’s some questions that you could ask instead?

x What’s your part in this situation?

x What can you learn about yourself?

When you ask yourself those questions, you may realise that…

x You’ve never given any feedback to the guy who runs the meeting.

x That you’d also not said very much yourself during the meetings.

x And that actually you run your own meetings in a similar way, so that the people who come to those probably feel the same way as you do. That they are a waste of their time too.

And after you realise those things, you could then take some action.

x You could give feedback to the guy who runs the meetings.

x You could speak up more at the next meeting and make some suggestions.


x And you could ask those people who come to your meetings how you could make them better.

You could take more responsibility, learn something, and take action. And in doing so, you would have more power. Most people don’t want to take more responsibility. They’d rather sit through boring meetings not saying anything and just complaining afterwards. Here’s the biggest signpost to where you’re not taking responsibility or where you could take more responsibility. Notice where in your life you are complaining about something. Other people, your job, your partner, your kids, your health, your life. If you find yourself regularly complaining about something, then right there is an opportunity for you to take more responsibility. So when you notice yourself complaining about something - Ask yourself those questions: What is my part in this? What can I learn here? Why have I created this? Let me ask you two more questions…

x Who’s been at every upsetting or difficult situation in your life?

x Who’s been there every time something went wrong in your life? Just maybe you had something to do with it? When you take full responsibility for all your thoughts, feelings, actions, behaviours, decisions, and results, then you have power. Power to choose. Power to change. Power to make stuff happen. When you avoid taking responsibility for your experience of life, you have no power. You are a victim. Stuff happens to you. Power is accepting all your fears and anxieties and acting anyway. Power is making decisions and taking actions. Ending things when they need to be ended. Accepting others for how they are, not how you’d rather they be. Responsibility is:

x not blaming others,

x not being the victim,


x not complaining,

x not thinking you deserve a free ride

x not thinking that life should be fairer

x not being jealous or envious of others

x not being cynical

In other words, accepting reality as it is, and working with it. A high level of responsibility looks like you choosing your responses moment by moment. Rather than just reacting and looking for causes elsewhere. This starts with noticing what’s happening in you. Your thoughts. Your feelings. The actions you are about to take. Then asking yourself those same questions: What is my part in this? What can I learn here? Why have I created this? Thinking, and then choosing how you will respond. And then taking action. Over and over again. High-performance, and personal, professional, and organizational transformation, is and will always be about you and I taking more responsibility. Of course our egos and our stories about ourselves would rather we didn’t do this. They would much rather this wasn’t true or valid. It loves us being the victim, not taking responsibility, not having power, and therefore not having to take any action. Lying low. Being right. Avoiding difficult conversations. Denying things. Blaming others. Because there’s always a benefit, a pay-off to avoiding responsibility. We get to be right. We get to justify our actions. We get to avoid situations that may feel uncomfortable. Now, having said all that, I guess that leaves you with two options… Go on as you have been, telling yourself that it’s not your fault. Telling yourself the same story over and over again. About how it’s their fault, or the circumstances fault, or some other reason. And getting the results you’ve been getting. Or…you can choose to accept that at least some what you’ve heard and seen here is true. That you are responsible for your experience of life. And then choosing to be the Master of your life, and not the Victim. Choosing responsibility. Moment to Moment


By taking more responsibility, you’ll have more power and more freedom. When you know that you’re responsible for your experiences of life, then you waste no time or energy looking for other things and people to blame for anything. After a while this becomes automatic. Something happens and you’re immediately asking yourself what was your part in it, then you’re looking for how you can change or improve the situation. And when this becomes a habit, just watch your performance, and the performance of your team improve significantly. Please download the worksheet next to this video and spend just five minutes discovering where in your life you’re probably not taking responsibility, and therefore where you can start to make progress and improve performance. Thank you for watching this video.


Taking Responsibility… Area of Life:

What part of this area of your life are you frequently complaining about, or blaming someone or something for?

How can you take more responsibility? What is Your part in it? What can YOU learn about you in this situation? Why have YOU created this? What can YOU do about this?

Your Work / Business / Career?

Your Personal Relationships?

Your Finances?

Your Health?

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